After visiting North America for the first time to attend San Diego Comic Con International in 2013, one of the biggest conventions of it’s type in the world, I was left wanting to visit America again. The previous visit was a great experience and I was keen to visit San Diego Comic Con again. Unfortunately the friends I went with didn’t want to go a second year running so I decided it would be a good idea to consider tying in convention going with a visit to New York City, a place I also wanted to visit at some point anyway. This time I invited my sister along as she hadn’t been on holiday without our parents before, and she’d never been outside of Europe.

As she hadn’t been abroad since 2002 it meant she hadn’t had a passport for a while so this was the first thing to sort. We decided that even if we couldn’t get tickets for New York Comic Con that we’d still go so it made sense for her to get this sorted ready so she’d have her passport ready at the point we needed to book flights. I also advised her to leave her visa waiver until closer to the time so that it’d give her more time to re-use the it if necessary.

Outside of Comic Con there would still be quite a bit to see so it made sense to have several days outside of the convention as well to take in the sights. New York City is made up of 5 outer boroughs known as Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Islands. The majority of tourist attractions are in Manhattan, though I was keen on trying to see some of the other boroughs.

We started off by plotting the sights we wanted to see on a map. Around this time I then booked tickets for “Rock of Ages” on Broadway as seeing a show is one of those things that is a “must do” when in New York. It also made a good birthday present for my sister. A friend I usually travel abroad with also decided he’d hop down to New York from Canada for a long weekend so for some of this trip there would be the three of us, though he wouldn’t be joining us for Broadway.

There was very little planning to do for this trip except to make sure my sister had everything she needed for the trip, and knew what to expect when we got there. As part of my marathon training I did have to figure out what runs I’d need to do whilst in New York and decided I could probably do them around Central Park.

Finally the tickets for Comic Con went on sale. The way they were doing this was different to San Diego as they don’t sell out quite as quick, but we weren’t sure how quickly they would. As 4-day tickets went on sale first and would cost the same as two 1-day tickets we decided we’d have a go at getting these first. The idea behind this was that if we missed out on 4-day tickets then we’d still get another chance at getting tickets. As it turned out we were fortunate and got the tickets we wanted.

After this I then pre-booked tickets for the Marvel Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. exhibition and a tour of the Statue of Liberty. Any other planning we’d do would then be dependent upon the schedule for Comic Con.

Now we just had to wait for the adventure to begin…