My Weekend in NYC

Two years ago, my boyfriend (now fiancé) and I visited New York City in the fall, so we were excited to take a repeat vacation to the Big Apple this year. We stayed at the Even Hotel near Grand Central, which was a cool, hip hotel with a great location; the room featured exercise equipment (yoga mat and block, foam roller, resistance bands, and a big exercise ball), and since they gave us free drink vouchers, our first night there we had a happy hour drink at the hotel bar before playing a game of ping pong (my fiancé couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t hold the handle of the paddle…don’t worry, it’s a Dartmouth thing!). We could easily walk or take the subway from our hotel everywhere we needed to go, so the location was perfect!

We walked around everywhere (we didn’t even take the subway until our second day in town), so we definitely got our steps in! Even in the rain we were walking around getting our much-needed exercise. It’s the best way to explore a city anyway; you never know what you’ll find!

Here were the highlights from our trip:

1.     1. Visiting friends and family

Friends and ice cream is the best combination!

We know a lot of people who live in and around New York, so we made plans ahead of time to make sure to see them. We had dinner with two of my friends who moved to New York after leaving DC this summer; her cousin recommended Bistango, an Italian restaurant in the Kimberly Hotel, and it was very good. Then we stopped by Van Leeuwen for dessert, where my fiancé and I split a mini chocolate lovers sundae. Can’t beat that!

The next day we had Italian food again (this time pizza at Motorino) for lunch with my fiancé’s family. Both his niece as well as his nephew’s girlfriend are pregnant, so we got together with them and their significant others to celebrate their future babies (and our own recent engagement, too). I had met his niece and her husband before, but I had not met his nephew or his girlfriend, so it was lovely to not only meet them but get to know them a little bit. They are all really nice, so it was a very pleasant lunch. AND we went out for ice cream again, and the peanut butter brownie honeycomb is AMAZING!

 Later that night we had dinner at Sabai Thai with a frat brother of my fiancé and his wife; these are people he’s known for DECADES, so I wanted to make a good impression. They were friendly and totally welcoming, so I had nothing to worry about. We enjoyed a long, leisurely dinner of pad thai and yummy cocktails. We almost didn’t want the night to end, but they had a long trip back to New Jersey, so we parted ways late that night, but we hope to see them again soon.

2.    2. Culturing ourselves at the Met

Image found here

W  While we are spoiled with so many free museums in D.C., NYC has lot of great museums, so we figured we’d pay the fees to visit one of them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a HUGE museum, and they have a special Manet v. Degas exhibit, so we thought we’d certainly get our money’s worth there. That exhibit was interesting, and we learned a lot about the two artists who were contemporaries and even friends. I thought it was cool to compare their art side by side, especially when the content was similar, such as dancers, bathers, or horses. We also looked at a lot of Roman and Greek statues, pottery from ancient Persia, and many paintings from the Impressionists like Monet. We could have been there all day!

3.    3. Enjoying nature

The "Imagine" mosaic in Central Park in honor of John Lennon

While you might not think of getting out in the Great Outdoors in New York City, they do have some wonderful parks. We walked through much of Central Park despite the drizzle the day we arrived, and on the morning we left, we took the subway downtown to check out the High Line and the Little Island (which only opened about two years ago). It’s always relaxing to just walk amongst trees and plants, surrounding oneself with greenery. And we had no rain on our last day, so that was even better!

The Little Island is cool from far away as well as inside the park itself!

4. Exploring Chelsea

      After we walked along the Highline, we stopped by Chelsea Market, which my fiancé had never been to before. Many of the stores weren’t open yet that early on a Sunday, but the market itself was all decked out for Halloween, and we did find a cute shop selling lots of Japanese merchandise like Hello Kitty and Tokidoki.

Vintage vibes at the Hotel Chelsea

      After the market, we walked over to the Hotel Chelsea (colloquially called the Chelsea Hotel). I had recently read an article about the hotel in the Wall Street Journal magazine, which explained the famous history of the hotel (many celebrities and artists used to live there); it had been closed for many years for renovations and only recently re-opened. I loved how they kept the old vibes of the place; you felt like you stepped back in time. And the walls were covered with artwork from former tenants who occasionally paid their rent through their artistic works. We may have stayed for a drink at the bar if it hadn’t been mid-morning!

I feel like this list doesn’t do our trip justice. We walked around so much that sometimes we would just stumble upon random things. We found yummy places to eat (we enjoyed bagel breakfast sandwiches from Ess-a-Bagel and Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company, and read my Yelp review for Clinton Hall), came across family-friendly street markets, and escaped the rain playing house in CB2 and Design within Reach. For only having been in the city for almost exactly 48 hours, we packed a lot in!