New York City 10th Anniversary Trip: PART 1
To celebrate our first decade of marriage, Seth and I decide to take a trip to NYC. Neither of us had ever really spent time there and it was something we’d been hoping to do for a few years. My parents graciously agreed to come watch our children while we went on a 4 day/4 night adventure together. It’s been several years since our last big travel adventure (Europe trip in 2008), so we were a little rusty but we quickly got into the swing of things and had a great, busy, exhausting, fun time together. I wanted to record everything because I’m well aware of how short my short-term memory lasts. So this is a record of what we did, what we saw, and, as importantly, what we ate. Our eating philosophy was “more less is more,” meaning we wanted to try smaller amounts of more things (especially quintessential NY things like a bagel, cheesecake, a hotdog, Brooklyn pizza, etc.), so we snacked our way through the city rather than sitting down to full meals and then tried to walk off all those delicious calories.
Thursday October 3
How we got there:
Booked a package through Priceline
Spirit Airlines from O’Hare to LaGuardia
Scheduled departure: 5:57 p.m. CST
Actual departure: 7:15 p.m. CST
Impressions: First (and hopefully last) time to fly Spirit. Didn’t know that they charge for each carry-on bag larger than a purse; luckily we found out at ticketing ($50 per bag!) instead of at the gate ($100 per bag!). So much for being a cheap flight. Very unimpressed with the chaos and lack of communication at the gate, as well as multiple unnecessary gate changes.
Cab from LaGuardia to Parkside Bed and Breakfast at 199 Ocean Ave., east side of Prospect Park, southern Brooklyn. Second floor bedroom, private bath, shared kitchen area (stocked with breakfast food) in an a three-story limestone row house. In spite of the 20+ minute subway commute into Manhattan, we really enjoyed staying in Brooklyn, having a quiet, private “home,” being able to make our own breakfast, and getting to see inside a gorgeous old limestone.
Friday Oct 4
Sunny, a bit hazy, 82-degree high
What We Did:
Midtown walking
Today Show outdoor stage area
Rockefeller Plaza
St. Patrick’s Cathedral (under fairly major construction)
Grand Central Station (beautiful and impressive)
Chrysler Building lobby
NY Public Library (beautiful Rose Main Reading Room)
Bryant Park (charming, small, leafy)
Top of the Rock (long lines due to elevator shortage; views were worth it, not crowded at the top)
Central Park: zoo exterior, the Mall (tree-lined and lovely), Sheep Meadow from a distance, Bethesda fountain, Loeb Boathouse, Strawberry Fields, the Lake, the Ramble, a bit of the Shakespeare Garden, Delacorte theater, and Belvedere castle. Planned to do Northern Central Park on Monday but weather didn’t allow.
MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), Midtown North (free Friday evenings, huge but fast line; Seth saw Paul McCartney walk by; thousands of people inside; outdoor sculpture garden, 4th and 5th floor galleries; Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, Pollock, Rothko, etc.)
Koreatown walking
Empire State lobby
Times Square (requisite neon lights, digital screens, and crush of human traffic)
What We Ate:
El Margon at W 46th St & 6th Ave A small, busy, low-frills Cuban lunch counter where we split the “legendary, obscenely good” cubano sandwich (pressed panino with roast pork, salami, cheese, pickles, mojo, and mayo, $7.50; quote from the NYC Lonely Planet guide). Good but definitely not amazing; more like “G-rated good.”
Wafle and Dinges food cart, SW corner of Central Park Recommended by cousin Danae. We ordered the Throw Down waffle, so-named for winning Bobby Flay’s Throw-Down Challenge: a completely delicious waffle covered with even more delicious spekuloos (a creamy Dutch gingerbread cookie spread) and whipped cream and a second waffle with spekuloos ice cream (yes!) and drizzled chocolate magic shell over the top. Definitely at the top of the list for most delicious thing we ate in NYC.
Woori Jip on W 32nd Street near Broadway, Koreatown Highly recommended (on Yelp.com) Korean buffet; as fans of Korean food, we were very underwhelmed by the pricey, mediocre-at-best cafeteria style food.
Serendipity 3 on E 60th near 3rd Ave, Upper East Side We had to wait a bit before we were seated at the table in front of a fireplace on the second floor that our waiter informed us was the table John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale sat at in the movie Serendipity. We shared a giant peanut butter frozen hot chocolate (yum!) and a slice of rich, dense blackout cake. Really, really good.
Saturday October 5
High 70s, sunny, pleasant
What We Did:
Attempted Prospect Park Botanical Gardens, Brooklyn (a special function negated normally-free Saturday morning admission)
Eastern side of Prospect Park walking
Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn (enjoyed large outdoor green market)
Brooklyn TKTS booth (bought discounted tickets to Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark)
Waterfront area, DUMBO (Down Under Brooklyn Bridge) walking
Brooklyn Heights area along Willow Street walking
Brooklyn Promenade walking
Regret: Planned to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, but hopped on a downtown train without thinking. Intended to make it back on Monday but weather didn’t allow.
9/11 Memorial Visitor Center (lots of waiting in lines; area still under some construction): North and South Reflecting Absence pools (beautiful and moving), the Survivor Tree (an eight-foot stump pulled from the wreckage at Ground Zero, nursed back to health in a park, uprooted in 2010 severe storm, now rooting in memorial park), Memorial Museum (not completed, but peeked in glass walls to see two steel tridents, part of the original North Tower façade).
Financial District walking
Trinity Church
New York Stock Exchange exterior
Charging Bull bronze statue at Bowling Green park
Staten Island Ferry (free; nice but hazy views of the Statue of Liberty (closed due to current government shut down)
Broadway show: Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark at Foxwoods Theater on 42nd St. As fans of U2’s Bono and the Edge (who wrote the music and lyrics) we’ve enjoyed hearing about the show’s debacles. The only discounted tickets still available were front row, center; we decided it was an only-in-NYC experience we wanted to have. We had to crane our necks to look right up at the stage, where the actors stood RIGHT in front of us with their shoes at our eye-level. The show was a lot of fun and very entertaining, even though it was cheesy and comic book-ish; several scenes seemed more like college theater, not Broadway. But the high wire flying stunts were very impressive, and when Spiderman first flew in, he stopped only inches from my face, grabbing the stage right in front of me to stop himself; he then threw out large ribbon spirals of “web” that landed all over Seth and most of us in the front row. Actors often stood right above us, meaning we were spat on more than we’d anticipated, especially during a Peter Parker solo when he sang the spit-laced word “believe” over and over onto our faces. We thought the Green Goblin actor was excellent, but Mary Jane was just okay. It certainly wasn’t serious theatre, but it was definitely a spectacle and incredibly entertaining, especially from front and center.
What We Ate:
Juliana’s Pizza, Old Fulton St., DUMBO Juliana’s Pizza is next door to Grimaldi, which wouldn’t open open for another half hour and already had a long line. While many people recommend Grimaldi, locals told us to try Juliana’s which was recently opened by Patsy Grimaldi, the man who created Grimaldi’s but sold it to retire. He came out of retirement to open Juliana’s. We ordered a small margherita pizza, which was delicious. The sauce tasted very fresh and we wouldn’t have minded more of the mozzarella cheese. Our pizza was accidentally delayed a long time, so the waitress offered complimentary dessert; we chose the Brookie Bridge, two brownie cookies with a scoop of super creamy vanilla ice cream made by local Brooklyn Ice Cream company.
Shake Shack at Murray Street near the West Side Highway Long wait for the delicious but small cheeseburger and fries that we split, recommended by several sources. We were going to order another hamburger or a shake but because of the long wait and the time, we headed uptown instead. We forgot to take a picture of our meal.
Sabrett push-cart hotdog near Times/Herald Square Seth bought a $3 hotdog; got the job done.
Crumbs Bake Shop on 42nd St., Theatre District We had a cinnamon-sugar “Crumbnut” (their version of the “cronut,” which is a cross between a croissant and doughnut created by Dominique Ansel Bakery) and a Bavarian-crème-filled Crumbnut. The Bavarian-crème was much better and lighter; the cinnamon-sugar had a more cake-like texture and tasted stale.
Tune in soon for Part 2.
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