Our Welcome to New York

Manhattan skyline

This year's family getaway came earlier than expected. As soon as school was out, I had already made plans to cross over the border. And not just the "close to the border" kind of crossing either. This year's getaway destination was New York City, a good 6 hours from the Canada-US border.

The holiday schedule moved up a bit because the family chose to join a bus tour to New York and the availability came up during the Canada Day weekend. It felt kinda odd leaving Canada on Canada Day but we were definitely looking forward to seeing a new place for the first time. Since arriving in North America, New York has been at the top of places to visit and this year, it was finally happening for us.

The tour started at around 8am when the bus picked us up in Mississauga. It was a 4-day trip to New York. The itinerary was that we would spend the first day on the bus travelling to our hotel, which was situated in New Brunswick. And then we would spend the second and third day in Manhattan, New York. And the fourth day, we would be heading back to Canada.

It promised to be a quick, jam-packed trip and certainly sounded as exhausting as my Contiki European Discovery trip in 2010. I was highly hesitant at first to book the family on this tour since I knew that bus tours will tend to test our stamina. And I was not wrong. It did. But my family was such a trooper. Although there were a lot of moaning and complaints about long walks and wrong directions and indecisive choices, we came back to Canada intact.

Join me as I share our New York visit. However, short it was. Taylor Swift had the right idea: As much as we wanted to visit and experience it, New York had been waiting for us all along.