So far, I’ve shared what we did on the first three days of our budget trip to New York and today, I’m going to share our last full day with you. Trust me, it was a good day!
Seeing as we did more than we’d expected on day 2, we’d actually ticked just about everything off of our New York bucket list by this point so I decided to go with plan b for today which was to head to the American Museum of Natural History.
I was convinced the kids would love it as it looked like so much fun in the Night at the Museum films so, despite their protests, I put my foot down and told them we were going as soon as we’d finished our posh hotel breakfast which was made up of leftover cake and melon from the night before.
The museum has a ‘pay what you want policy’ which I won’t go into detail about as I shared it in my five frugal things post when I got home but basically, we paid $20 to get in which was a bargain.
Aside from the famous T-Rex skeleton, there was absolutely nothing in that museum that the kids were interested in. They tried to pretend for my sake but they weren’t very good at it so we decided to cut our losses and head across the road to Central Park.
We had hot dogs for lunch from a cart in the park and then went for a stroll past the great lawn and got totally lost as we were heading to the Bethesda fountain area but found ourselves at the opposite end of the park somehow. We decided not to head back to the other end of the park and instead, we thought we’d call an Uber to get back to the hotel but we were in such a busy location that we needed to walk a bit further away from the park so it was safe for the Uber to stop.
What happened next was bizarre! We walked past a crowd of people outside a hotel called The Mark and it turned out that they were waiting for Meghan Markle who was having her baby shower there. As we stood there trying to figure out whether it was worth waiting to catch a glimpse over the tops of everyone’s heads, the security team moved a load of people off the road and somehow, we ended up right at the front as it was all the people in front of us who got moved. We were right at the point that they were OK with people standing so we ended up right at the front just in time to see her coming out of the hotel.
After our princess spotting adventures, we got an Uber back to the hotel where we had a quick relax and warm before heading out to Fifth Avenue for some long-awaited shopping time. Miss Frugal bought herself some jeans and some make-up from Sephora but that was with her own pocket money that she’d saved up so I’m not going to count that. I bought myself some Dior lip gloss from Sephora and a super cute water bottle from Barnes and Noble which I will count as that came out of our budget. 😉
We had a good look at the handbag themed windows in Saks Fifth Avenue and wandered over to the Rockefeller Centre to watch the ice skating for a while.
We had to head back to the hotel after that though as I’d booked a table at Serendipity for Frozen Hot Chocolate! Frozen Hot Chocolate is something Miss Frugal and I loved as a treat last time we visited New York and I really wanted Master Frugal to have the same experience. It’s not cheap but it was a memorable treat – Serendipity is a gorgeous little place that’s been in quite a few films and it’s famous for it’s Frozen Hot Chocolate…
We then walked back to the hotel stopping at the supermarket for drinks and a couple of sandwiches for later that night in case we got hungry as we hadn’t had actual food since our lunchtime hot dogs.
Uber to the museum $15
Entry to the museum $20
Lunch $15
Uber back to the hotel $12
Shopping $45
Serendipity $40
Supermarket $25
Not our cheapest day of the trip but still not bad when you consider we had some extra special treats.
In case you’ve missed my last few New York on a Budget posts, you can catch up here:
- New York on a budget – day 1
- New York on a budget – day 2
- New York on a budget – day 3
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