Wine Down: NYC Trip {Part I}

I hope everyone had an amazing holiday with your family and friends! This year, my family spent Christmas in New York City. Jared and I were joined by my mom, my brother and his wife, Jared’s mom and his sister. We had a fabulous time exploring the city together and enjoying all the holiday festivities that make New York so magical this time of year. This trip was particularly exciting for Jared’s sister and my brother’s wife because it was their first time ever visiting New York City. I was thrilled to be able to use my new camera to capture all the fun. Since I took over 300 pictures and have so many stories to tell, I am going to split this trip up into multiple blog posts. I apologize in advance for the photo overload that is about to take over my blog :)

Day 1 - Saturday, December 22

We departed Jacksonville bright and early Saturday morning on a non-stop flight to NYC. Don’t you just love non-stop flights? They are seriously amazing. Unfortunately, our flight was a little short of amazing. As we were making our final descend into New York, the pilot came over the intercom to inform us that the nose of our plane had lost power steering. While that didn't really affect the pilot’s ability to land our plane, it would affect his ability to steer the plane once we were on the ground. As we circled around New York dumping fuel (you know, just in case something did happen during our landing), the pilot warned us that when we did arrive on the ground there would be a plethora of emergency response vehicles ready just as a precaution. Jared’s mom reassured us that our plane would not crash because she was on the plane with us and since she has already been in a plane crash this year, the odds of someone being in two plane crashes in their lifetime is just ridiculous. In the end, our pilot successfully landed and steered our plane to the gate with no problem. However, it was quite an interesting way to begin our vacation.

Once in the city, we stayed at The Roosevelt Hotel (45th Street & Madison Ave.) which was absolutely beautiful. I kept taking pictures of the lobby of the hotel because I was so obsessed with it.

We spent our first day venturing out into the cold to walk around and explore the city. We hit all the typical tourist spots along the way…

Grand Central Station for some lunch at the Manhattan Chili Company

Erika and I liked to pretend that we were on Gossip Girl and hit up all the filming locations throughout the city on our trip. Don't worry, there are plenty more "spotted" photos to come. xoxo