New York City - Top of The Rock, Rockefeller Center, JFK

07-18-2016 New York City

Can’t believe today is already the worst part of my trip. I have been having severe diarrhea since last night, and it is not getting better.

It is important to have health insurance, but just make sure you have the right one. I can’t believe that Kaiser does not have coverage in New York, and almost the whole east coast. Kaiser used to have presence in the state of New York, but because of the high cost of operation, it exited the market, and now I can’t use the roaming agreement to get any medical attention.

Running out of option, I try to call Kaiser, and all they can do is to transfer me to a nurse (yes, not even a doctor) for medical advice, which cannot be used as proof of medical advice for insurance purpose (not even for my health FSA account).

The hostel’s checkout time is 10 am in the morning, and I have to check out by then. I just barely make my way through to the lounge and spend my whole morning there until I get slightly better.

After taking some medications, I got better and I continue my journey in New York.

I can’t believe there is such a store which whole purpose is to help people brighten up their shoes since it could totally be done by machines nowadays, but I guess it’s true that New Yorkers are business centric, and they always care about how they look, contrary to the people in the Silicon Valley or in California, where people can literally wear flip flops to school or work.

With my stomach condition, I can only stare at Lady M’s cakes from far even though they all look like absolutely heavenly delicious.

Top of The Rock – Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center

Last time when I went to New York, I didn’t spend time going to observation deck because I felt it everywhere would be around the same everywhere in the world standing from a certain elevation and I didn’t feel like spending a lot of money just for that. This time with a less tight budget, I am able to get on one of the observation decks in New York.

Having done research on different observation decks in New York, I don’t think there is a huge difference in the decks in terms of price or sights. However, the Top of The Rock always has fewer people to visit because people tend to go to the Empire State’s building instead. Good for me! I don’t have to wait for long to get to the deck even though I am a walk in customer.

I can see the Central Park from here. The Central Park is huge and now it just looks like a huge Pokemon Center to me and a lot of people. People have been pulling some pranks on people playing Pokemon Go in Central Park.

One of the advantages of going to the Top of the Rock is that I am able to capture Empire State’s Building in the picture, while you can’t really take a picture of the building you are standing on if you are on Empire State.

I didn’t notice there is a second story to the observation deck, which is also included in the admission, until I almost left the building. I am glad that I took a leap of faith and just went up to check out the view, which was totally worth it.