Pre-Christmas NYC

Our original flight plan from Shymkent was taking us to 2 days in New York City. Due to the delays and mix-ups we ended up having only 24 hours to check it out. We landed in NYC on the 23rd of December at around 5 pm. We pre-bought tickets to the Empire State Building (with the VIP line jump) and the GreyLine double decker bus tour. Amazingly, we were able to cram in both activities plus a little more!

Pizza from Famous Ray's on 7th Ave.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn on Fifth Avenue. It was close to most everything we wanted to see, even though the rooms were a bit small. Here's the view from the 10th story:

Pizza and deli sandwiches were on the menu as NYC is famous for both. Finding a pizza place open past 9 pm on some of the side streets around us was difficult, but we managed to wander into one just off Times Square, which happened to be only 3 blocks away.

Rockefeller Center was only a 6 block walk as well, so after dinner we headed that way. Beware! The lights turn off around 11:30 pm and there was a lot of groaning and booing from the crowd. Luckily, we made it there around 11 pm and had plenty of time to take pictures:

Several of the department stores have over-the-top winter displays during the holiday season. We were only able to make it to Saks Fifth Avenue, but the display was awesome! Each window was filled with animatronics of yeti and people, and told a story about a talented snowflake-making yeti that made his way to the Big Apple to create snow for Saks. Although we didn't capture every window, here are a few glimpses of those we did:

The hotel provided breakfast in the morning, which was perfect for our early morning jaunt to the Empire State Building. We were told that it gets busy quick, and we had to leave the hotel at 2 pm in order to make our flight. The viewing balconies open at 8 am and we arrived around 8:15. The lines were minimal - thank goodness - and we were able to make it up to both viewing balconies and out in around an hour.

Lower Manhattan

In the middle-top of this picture is a glimpse of the rounded building of Madison Square Garden.

Chrysler Building

On the left, if you follow the H&M building down, just to the left of it you can see a bright light - that's Times Square. In the upper-right of this photo is Central Park.

We really wanted to take the subway up to the check-in site for GreyLine bus tours, but to save time we hopped in a taxi. We were able to hop on the 10:15 bus loop that would take us by the 9/11 tower site, Statue of Liberty, SoHo, and many other locations on our list to visit. We knew that we didn't have enough time to get off the bus to visit each location, but at least we could take pictures and say, "we've been there."

We left Shymkent, Kazakhstan on December 20th, and finally on the 24th of December we would be landing in Denver, Colorado, home. The trip was full of ups and downs, but we were really glad to be home finally!

Walking Warsaw

All in all, we only had 20 hours to check out Warsaw. We landed in the evening and checked into the Radisson Blu Centrum Hotel, I was lucky enough to have some Orbucks saved up so the room only cost $35.

View from the hotel room

We walked up the street a few blocks to a busy area with a lot of shopping. At the corner was a little bar/cafe that looked interesting so we popped in for some food. We ordered beers, polish sausages, french fries, and some sort of dumplings.

Afterwards, we walked up the street to check out the shops. The McDonald's was huge and featured foods unbeknownst to us - we didn't try them but we took a picture!

Adjacent to the McDonald's was a grocery/department store, so we wandered through it. Back outside on the sidewalk there were a lot of people chatting and wandering around. We went further up the street to see the types of shops, which included Swatch and other upscale shops I would never step foot in on a normal basis. It was late in the evening and most of the stores were closing up, we were also pretty exhausted, so we decided to head back to the hotel.

The morning was raining, but that didn't stop us! For breakfast we walked half a block to the 99 restaurant. We both ordered the Polish Breakfast that consisted of bread, various cheeses, eggs, and deli meats. It was very European, but it was a refreshing break from the food in Kazakhstan.

Our waiter was kind enough to help us find the best way to get the old town of Warsaw. Since we didn't have a lot of time to research things to do, we had to jump on the quickest and cheapest thing possible. On the 3 block walk to public transport we saw a beautiful flower market:

We took the light rail about a mile up the road (it was the quickest way since we were so short on time) to the old town of Warsaw which had buildings dating back to the 13th century.

After WWII there was a lot of destruction to the old town, but it was meticulously rebuilt using as much of the original bricks as possible. The place was beautifully decorated for Christmas, which made this quick trip even more exciting!

Our first glimpse of old town after departing the light rail

Stairs to the bridge to cross the road

Going across the bridge

Looking down on the street from the bridge. The bottom right is where the first picture was taken.

The square of the old town is surrounded by shops and cafes. It looked as if they were getting ready to set up for some sort of celebration, and the center of the square contained a temporary ice rink.

On the walk to the old town square

In the old town square

We wanted to stay longer to take in the sights and explore more of the old town, but time was running short so we headed back to the hotel on the light rail. This is definitely a place we would like to revisit when we have more time!