Caroline's Graduation and Disney Day 1

We had the best week last week celebrating my little sister's college graduation from Florida State University! Caroline graduated on Saturday with 2 engineering degrees and a physics minor so after lunch on Friday, I headed up to Tallahassee. We met up before dinner then headed to the FSU club at the stadium for one last dinner together there. Afterwards, I headed back to Caroline's apartment and stayed her last night with her and watched The Lizzie McGuire Movie which is one of our favorites.

Saturday morning, we were up early and got ready for graduation at 9 am. It was a great ceremony but it was over 3 hours long! Thankfully, the College of Engineering was the first one to walk so after discovering there was WiFi in the building, I was glued to my phone. I didn't realize that half the graduates and spectators had left the building (who knew you could just leave graduation) so after 2 hours, we all dipped out - best decision! We had lunch, packed up and headed back to Orlando.

Stephen and Caroline's boyfriend, Keith, met us at the condo we were staying at and before we knew it, it was time to head over to Disney Springs to meet up with some family friends. My dad was able to get a condo at the Wyndham at Bonnett Creek which is honestly the perfect place to stay when going to Disney. It's on Disney property (right between Disney Springs and Hollywood Studios) but it isn't owned by Disney so we were able to rent a 3 bed/2 bath condo with a full kitchen for less than a mid-range hotel at Disney. As a note, they offer a bus service but it will cost you a pretty penny per day. Since Stephen and I get free parking with our seasonal passes, we loaded everyone up in my car and drove to the parks every day. We usually do the Disney buses while staying onsite but man, driving was so much easier and quicker.

We did dinner ice cream at Disney Springs with our family friends and right before I was able to dig into our sundae, my mom ran into my best friend from high school and her parents! We got the biggest kick out of it and enjoyed catching up :) After hanging out for a while, we headed back to the condo and played a few card games before calling it a night.

Sunday, we got to Animal Kingdom just as it was opening for the day (y'all, my biggest Disney advice is to get to the park 15-30 minutes before it opens. You'll get to walk on so many rides, it's not hot and not as crowded. We did notice most of the parks ended up letting us in 10-15 minutes before official open time) and was able to do Everest, Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl right off the bat. Afterwards, we took our time walking around seeing shows and finishing up with the Kilimanjaro Safari. We did the safari around 5:30 pm and it was the best one we've ever done - the animals were out. We had a giraffe block the road and come right up to the car more times than I could count.

The Lion King show is easily the best show at Animal Kingdom... maybe all of Disney. Oh, and we hated the Finding Nemo show lol

Baby Giraffe!

And a baby elephant!

We wanted to stay and watch the new light show but we finished everything with about 3 hours before the light show so we decided to head back and play putt putt at the resort and another round of card games. It was the perfect way to end the night.

Linking up with Biana

NYC | Day 5

I'm skipping the usual Five on Friday to finish up our NYC recap. Thank you for those who followed along - I know these seemed to never end and there were so many pictures in each post. I hope these recaps have been helping those who are planning or who want to plan a trip to NYC in the future :)

Tuesday was our last full day in NYC and it was so nice actually waking up in the city instead of riding a train or driving a car in. Everyone told us we just had to go to Sarabeth's for breakfast; it was a little on the pricey side but I was able to convince Stephen to go for our last breakfast in New York. We rode the subway over to the Central Park location and had the most delicious breakfast - totally worth it!

I don't remember what kind of french toast Stephen had but it was amazing

I had an omelette with spinach, goat cheese and a pumpkin muffin - the muffin was my favorite

After breakfast, we hopped back on the subway and headed over to Brooklyn so we could cross the Brooklyn Bridge. After getting there, we decided to rent city bikes to get across which was the best idea - it would've taken us forever to walk across. The bridge was packed but the bike lane made things pretty easy to get across. After a small fiasco at the bike station on the other side of the bridge, we returned our bikes and walked over to Washington Park. [The city bikes were a great deal - for $12/pp you rented a bike for the whole day and could take one from any station at any time for a 30 minute interval. The downside was it was only for 30 minute intervals but you were able to get to where you needed to go in that time. I will say, we did not try to venture out into the streets with these bikes lol]

I needed a subway photo... without trying to look like a total tourist goob

After Washington Park, we headed over to Little Italy for lunch. We wanted some authentic NYC pizza and me being from FL, I thought NYC pizza would be thick crust... wrong that's Chicago. After trying to find some thick crust pizza, which didn't exist, and both of us getting hangry, I told Stephen just to pick a place. He picked Gelso and Grand which didn't have "traditional" NYC pizza but had an amazing atmosphere - we still had delicious pizza too ;) After we were full and no longer hangry, we made our way over to China Town in hopes of getting some fake goodies lol I had been told that it was great and they still had great dupes but then also that it sucks now. I was worried I was about 15 years late to the party. We searched and searched and right before we almost gave up, we passed a lady who was fishing - we bit and I got a great bag! It was so much fun and Stephen calls it my Flouie Vuttion lol!

With my giant, black trash bag in hand, we headed over to the Flatiron Building for some pictures before heading back to the hotel to rest. 

Our hotel! It was perfect for us - updated, amazing location and clean :)

After resting, we got ready and headed back over to Central Park to take advantage of having our city bikes. We rode through Central Park and then hopped on the subway towards Chelsea to check out the Highline.

Just some Floridians documenting their subway experience lol

Stephen getting fancy with the camera ;)

We walked over to Toro from the Highline. Funny thing was, we didn't realize it was a tapas bar! It had a really cool atmosphere but we only got 2 things (it actually filled us up) and then we headed over to Ample Hills to get ice cream. We picked Ample Hills because they have a chocolate chip cookie cone but we were bummed when they didn't have any that night :/ Cone aside, their ice cream was really good and they had all sorts of fun flavors!

Since it was our last night, we decided to see Times Square at night before heading back to the hotel. It was really cool to see everything lit up and I'm so glad we were able to stop in one last time :)

Wednesday we were up super early to head to the airport via subway. I was really hesitant about it at first but it ended up being a great way to get to the airport - minus the guy who walked in-between trains while we were moving to throw up... cue my freak out. I did good though and moved to the other end of the car, put my headphones in and looked the other way for the rest of the ride. If you knew my absolute phobia of throw up, you'd be so proud ;)

I am heading up to Tallahassee today for the last time to see my little sister graduate! I know she's so excited to graduate and head out into the great big world and I couldn't be more proud :) She has worked so hard and earned every bit of her accomplishments. After graduation, we're heading to Disney for the week so I'll be MIA for a little while but you can still follow along on instagram or on snapchat (ashleyhirst23).