New York, New York
I recently went to New York city for the second time, and I still love everything about it! The people, the culture, the smell, the lights, and the hustle and bustle, is what makes New York city so special. This was just a random girls trip that my cousins and my sister and I decided take because we had the time off and the flights were cheap. It really pays off to fly a lot. I originally booked my flights separate because I had enough airline points with Southwest to get a one way ticket and only paid only $5 in fees for my departure flight to Laguardia Airport. I paid for the return flight with a Southwest gift card that was about $180 (from now on I will be asking for airline gift cards as gifts, takes a burden off one extra expense). My cousin found a flight after we booked, for only $84 with Southwest. So of course I traded that. In total, my flight to NY was only about $90!
We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn on Midtown Park Ave. My stepmom was gracious enough to give us some points and we payed less than one night stay for the whole weekend! The entire trip we used LYFT and took the subway everywhere. When you arrive in a new city, check your LYFT, I receive 50% off up to 10 rides almost everywhere I go, so we didn't pay more than $9 for a ride anywhere in the city. Our first night ate at Tableside Italian Cook Shoppe which was a small dinner restaurant with a warming atmosphere. The wine selection was great. I paired the Chianti, Toscana, Italy 2013 with the Tasty Crustacean dish. I was a homemade pasta with lobster sauce, lobster in shell, and a touch of brandy. It was amazing. I also shared some of my sisters sockeye salmon that was amazing with the dijon mustard sauce, and I don't even like anything that tastes like mustard, but it was mouth watering!
After we ate, we wanted to walk around and go out, but it rained so much, we went back to our hotel to talk and drink until we fell asleep.
The next day, we rode the subway to Brooklyn and ate the Ugly Duckling. Order the waffle sandwich, and the apple cider cocktail. The apple cider was perfect.
Then we went to the Brooklyn bridge. It took us forever to figure out how to walk on there because theres like some secret passage way under the bridge. But look for the food cart and a huge map on the wall and you'll see it. It's a wonder how it took us so long.
After the Brooklyn Bridge, I drug everyone to the Brewery. The Brooklyn Brewery has free entrance and free tours. Once you get in, you can choose to buy a single token for beer, or you can get 4 tokens for $20 which is a better deal, especially since I was the only one out of us that actually drinks beer. lol. At the counter they will even let you try various beers if you don't know what you like or what you want. They are the main beer provider for New York, and provide beer for various parts of the world. The history is interesting, the tour isn't that long, and everyone was pretty friendly.
We went back to the city after the tour and meeting new friends. BET was about to have their social media awards and they had a free event going on with the museum of memes. It was in a small space and we were interested to see what they did with the memes. There were some funny ones, but overall it was nothing very special.
After that, we walked around and went to the Empire State building. Because of the rain and bad weather, they suggested we not even spend our money to go all the way up because we probably wouldn't be able to see anything. Fortunately we had all been to the top during previous trips so it wasn't much of a disappointment. But during the summer, its an amazing sight!
We then went to Dallas BBQ in Times Square. The wings were fried to perfection and they were real, big wings, not the regular, small bar wings like from buffalo wild wings. Also, try one of their Texas sized frozen drinks and add all the extras. Very worth it. After we ate, we went to a karaoke bar for the night and sang until our voices were gone.
Sunday morning, we went to a popular brunch called Woodland. They usually have a long line outside so get there early. Luckily we only waited about 20min to sit down, but they tell you the wait is an hour. We waited downstairs in this cool underground bar area. There was a live DJ and its a pretty fun scene. The music was a little loud when we ate so there wasn't much talking going on, but you can still have fun. The food was pretty good and they had their own version of shrimp and grits that was surprisingly tasty and flavorful.
We then shopped around, went back to the city and walked to do some sight seeing by Madison Square, flatiron and more, then stopped by the Museum of Sex. Very interesting is all I can say. Explore for yourself at your own risk! haha! As you can imagine, I really didn't take many photos, and what I did take was on my Snapchat story at the time, but I wont be posting those here.
That night we went to this bar called Tonic, in Times Square that was pretty fun. It's a bar/restaurant and some nights they have karaoke and some nights the upstairs area turns into a club.
Monday was our last day there and of course the sun decides to show itself just a couple hours before we left. We had late flights so we were able to eat breakfast, explore part of the city, shop for last minute souvenirs and enjoy some of the sun!
My overall trip went well considering it was sort of last minute and the weather was bad. Luckily I had been there before and visited most of the tourist attractions, so this was more of a random explorer trip. The weather did steer us from doing a few things. So if you go during winter season make sure you bring cloves, a coat, hats, umbrella, thick socks and good walking shoes because it was freezing out there in the morning and at night. And walk as much as you can, there are so many people to see and things to do!
The steak and eggs with yucca at Friedman's was great. The steak wasn't over done and the sauce that came with it just put it over the top.
