Already the second full day in New York today. The weather forecast is great, Mr. Jet-lag almost left us alone and I feel a lot better again although I still have a “runny nose”. The first thing we wanted to do was getting our New York passes at the GrayLine Visitor center on 8th Avenue (between 47th and 48th Street), on our way there we stopped at the Starbucks for breakfast to go.

After getting our passes we went straight to the Rockefeller Center because we wanted to go to ‘The top of the Rock’ again because we wanted to see Central Park in green this time. Without waiting we were on 67th floor by 9:15 and we made some FaceTime calls to our family in the Netherlands. I still think it’s cool to stand on the top of 259 meter high building and share what we see with people at about 5.900 kilometer far away. After enjoying the sun and making some pictures we went downstairs ad walked down 5th avenue.

At 5th there was an all day parade running from 44th Street (the street where our hotel is located) all the way up to 79th street. The parade was the annual Puerto Rico parade which attracts a lot of visitors. At the beginning of the parade the major from New York, Michael Bloomberg, walked with the participants. And at the moment I wanted to make a picture from him our camera lens broke… After almost 6 years this wasn’t a total surprise I guess but the timing is not the best.

Since this was the only lens we had with us we need to find another one. Searching on the web learned us that the prices are the same everywhere so we decided to meet Glenn & Gina at the Best Buy, an electronics store, at Union Square to see or they had the lens. After getting the worst service in an US Store ever we got a new lens for 20$ less as the online prices in the US. Unfortunately this is still a lot more expensive as in Europe but we wanted to make some more pictures with our Canon this trip so we didn’t had a choice and bought the Canon EF-S 18-200mm again.

After this experience everyone was hungry so we went to Dallas BBQ to get a lunch. Danielle went for Chicken & Shrimps and I went for a Classic Burger from the BBQ.

After lunch we went to f*cking Brooklyn by car to have a stroll over the boardwalk along the beach and Coney Island, at the beach there where kites in a lot of different sizes and forms, there was even a witch ‘flying’ in the air. And Gina insisted that Danielle tried the world-famous hot-dogs from Nathan’s at the boardwalk.

From Coney Island we said Glenn and Gina goodbye, they need to go to work tomorrow, and we took the Subway line ‘Q’ back to Times Square.

At Times Square we walked through some stores before we went back to the hotel to give our feet a bit of rest and later the evening we went out to get some food before we went to bed a bit earlier as usual because tomorrow we have an early morning appointment.

This night was difficult we woke up several times because of the jet-lag and probably because of my cold. But in the morning we came out of bed without many problems because today would be shopping day!

We planned to meet Glenn & Gina on Staten Island so at 8:00 we left our hotel walked to Times Square from there we took the Subway 1 towards the Staten Island Ferry. The Staten Island Ferry is a free transit from Manhattan to Staten Island. Danielle found a great spot to make some pictures from the Statue of Liberty.

On the Staten Island side Glenn and Gina would pick us up with their car. First we gave them some gifts from Germany and soon we left for the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, one of the biggest outlet shopping centers in the world.

At about 11 o’clock we arrived and started with getting our free vouchers for extra reductions:

• VIP Coupon book with ‘Show Your Card’ (ANWB/ADAC/AAA)
• Free vouchers with a foreign MasterCard
• Getting a free suitcase when you spend 500$ or more on a MasterCard
• FourSquare check-inns for Specials

After getting an overview on what additional discounts for which shops were available we selects the first shop to visit, the 7 for All Mankind. I found 3 new jeans for about 75€ each which is a real bargain over the prices in the German outlets (180€). From there we went to the Converse where Danielle found a nice pair Converse in Stars and Stripes style.

At Michael Kors and Oakley we were not so lucky, but at Tommy Hilfiger Danielle hat her moment. Moment might be the worn word we stayed in the women part of the store for over 2 hours of shopping! At my side of the store there was not so much choice.

Since shopping makes you hungry we went to the Applebee’s for lunch to continue shopping afterwards. In the afternoon we spender an additional 2 hours of shopping at several stores like The Sunglass Hut, Vilebrequin, Uggs, The disney Store and more.

• 3 dresses
• 3 jeans
• 2 pants
• 1 pair of shoes
• 5 shorts
• 1 swimming pant
• 1 pair of sunglasses
• 2 suitcases
• 1 Polo shirt

And soon it was almost 6 o’clock and we were tired and ready to go back to our hotel. Glenn and Gina dropped us of right in front of our hotel so we didn’t need to travel from Staten Island back with 2 new suitcases full of clothing. After dropping of the suitcases we went to Times Square t check-out the Disney Store but we didn’t found any Tiger stuff for our little nephew but Danielle was lucky and found a new outfit for Duffy the Disney-bear.

Our feet were tired and sine I’m far from fit we went back to the hotel at 8:30.