Day 2
The main attractions today were the Museum of Modern Art and Hillsong NYC! First things first… we got into the city a bit later than anticipated and made our way straight to the waterfront on the east side (the East River). We found out pretty soon after walking into a dead end, that there was not a lot to see besides water and Queens (a district of New York City across the East River). The view was amazing though.
We even got to see the United Nations headquarters right beside the river. The building was very impressive and in case you were ever wondering how the headquarters of the UN looked like, here you go:
After that, we headed towards downtown to grab a coffee at Starbucks and I am telling you there is a Starbucks here on every corner, our tour guide ( I will tell you more about that later) said: “One day New York City will just be one extended Starbucks”. And I can actually see that happening!
Every Friday from 4 to 8, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) grants free entry to everyone. Little did we know about the huuuge line up around the whole block. When we finally got in, there were masses of people that I have never seen in my life in a museum. We soon figured out that Modern art is not really our favourite and so after spending an hour of being more or less pushed through the exhibitions, we gave up and left the museum. It was definitely worth it though and most of the paintings and installations were quite easily accessible despite the crowds.
It’s 7 o’clock now and thereforeeeeee…. time to make our way to the Hillsong church venue, the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Hillsong NYC
Hillsong is a Pentecostal (Christian) church from Australia and by now it has expanded massively with many different locations, literally all over the world, Germany, UK, South Africa and The U.S, just to name a few. I started going there when I was in London and I fell in love with it from the first day I went. Why? In my opinion, the pastors of this church get the messages across in a way that we can easily apply to our everyday lives and our christian journey. During worship, we sing songs that are actually cool and fun to sing and even to dance to! But most importantly, the church is all about people and community. They have many different bigger groups according to different age groups and these groups are then divided into smaller groups that meet weekly or bi-weekly, that are called connect groups. The idea is to just hang out, eat and talk about life. Some groups are even bible studies or interest groups, like arts groups or sports groups. The whole purpose of those groups is to build a church family and to find amazing friends for life. My church here in Ottawa which is called MyChurch actually, is super similar to Hillsong and that is where I have made the most amazing friends and if it was not for them, I would not be where I am right now on my journey. They always say, a relationship with Jesus is a journey with yourself and that the church is there for pointing people in the right direction and doing the journey with friends and community is the best way to do it! And I so agree to that!
The service that night was absolutely amazing! After waiting in the line for 30 minutes, yes the service was obviously very popular, we were seated in the upper tier of the old theatre, so we had an amazing view! The video shows the beginning of the service!
Worship was so good, if you wanna check out the music, all the Hillsong worship music is on Spotify and YouTube! Pastor John Gray was preaching that day and this guy is hilarious and his preach, oh my God, it was perfect!! The actual Hillsong NYC pastor, Carl Lentz is one of my favourite preachers and he has a lot of his sermons on YouTube, too!
Day 3-last day of the year!!
We decided to purchase one of those Sightseeing bus tickets as the weather was quite rainy and foggy, so it was easier to get to places and on the way listen to the audio guides and find out more about the city’s history!
We had booked the Top of the Rock experience for today so that was the first point on our list! As you can imagine it was very touristy haha and the tourist masses were real! I feel like once you go to New York, that view is what you have to see! It was super sunny as soon as we went up there, so lucky! Look yourself, there is not much more to say about that attraction! 😉
After that we made our way to the Upper East side and just kind of walked around to see the neighbourhood. As you can probably imagine, everything there was super posh but I loved it! I could totally see ourselves there in a few years with a rich husband and a sweet puppy. In Church they tell me to pray about my desires and at the same time I have to put myself into the setting to see whether God is in it with me or if I maybe shouldn’t do it. First part, done, and I will now figure out what He thought about that! 😉 just kidding!
Anyways, from there we went to the Guggenheim Museum, which we were really looking forward to visiting! The Architecture is so impressive and I have seen it in many movies before so I finally wanted to see it myself and it did not disappoint me!
They have free entry every Saturday evening, however having been to the museum of modern art yesterday and it was super packed, we just paid for it to have some peace while walking through the exhibitions! We got free audio guides too, which I have never done before in a museum, however it was so worth it! Learning something about the paintings actually makes you understand it a lot better and you can appreciate the Art more! This museum has probably been one of my favourite ones so far!
Just before the crazy crowds got in for free, we left and made our way back to the hotel to chill a little before we decided where we wanted to go to celebrate New Year’s Eve with our, in America, underage IDs… The museum visit was definitely a very nice ending of 2016 already though!
MyYearInOttawa 