New York Guide

Whew, this week is flying by after arriving back from New York late Monday night. This is my mom and my fourth year in a row visiting and I still haven’t even cracked the surface of everything there is to do and see. I know some of you have no interest in hearing about travel guides, so if that’s you either skip this post or just skim down to see any outfit pictures! I didn’t get the best shots, as we forgot between scurrying around but the weather was way warmer than we have experienced when visiting.

Friday

We flew in Friday morning, Milwaukee usually has reasonable nonstop flights and good flight times as well. We landed at 8:30 a.m. and took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at The Watson, which we found off Southwest’s hotel finder option. It is on 57th street in between 9th and 10th Avenue. We’ve stayed close to Central Park the last couple of years, as my mom usually wants to run at least once there during our trip.

We were pleasantly surprised to find out our room was ready, so we were able to unpack and settle in before we headed out for the day – that was clutch. We then found a spot for a breakfast sandwich, called Rex which was around the corner. It was super tiny so we took it to go and found a Starbucks so we could sit down and eat and get caffeinated. From there we did some scrolling through my Mom’s app she has to find tickets to shows. We had a couple in mind but ended up spontaneously grabbing tickets to see Golden Girls Live, because the tickets were so reasonable for later that night!

In the meantime, we grabbed tickets to a hop on hop off bus for an Uptown tour that basically took us from Times Square area up around the west side of Central Park into Harlem and looped back down the east side and all of the museums. It was a beautiful day to sit on top of the bus in the open air and very relaxing way to see a lot and take in a few fun facts from the tour guide on the bus.

We then went to a cute bar called The Ivy, which is near Columbus Circle and had drinks with Kelsey, one of Caitlin’s best friends from high school who moved to New York years ago. It was so much fun catching up with her and she took us over to this really cool rooftop called PHD which has views of Times Square.

We were having such a fun time with her that we ended up showing up to Golden Girls Live a little late but just in time for it to start. Be warned that they do not have a huge sign like other shows so pay attention if you’re navigating on your own, it’s just the address and a sign on the ground. This show was a hoot! It is a drag show version of Golden Girls and I loved it! They’ve been doing it for fifteen years together and they were all SO GOOD together. It was a Halloween special version and you could tell they just love to perform it. They had everyone laughing, and they impromptu would add little wisecracks which only made it better! Totally recommend it.

We grabbed sushi after the show, just up the road at a place called Ageha Sushi, which was good. From there, we called it a night because it had been such an early morning, but it was an awesome first day.

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Saturday

We had a slow start, but got up and went for a run through Central Park right away. That’s typically been a priority for our trips, as our mom is an avid runner. It’s a great way for us to spend time in the park and get some exercise! We grabbed coffee on the way back. Once we were showered and ready for the day, we headed over to 5th Avenue to brave the crowds and do some shopping! We wove in and out of stores and did some major trying on sessions. We came away with some good pieces, stay tuned to see them on here!

From there we were starving, so we headed over to grab an early dinner at Totto Ramen. My mom had never had ramen before, so it was fun to have it with her for the first time. There was  a crazy crowd waiting, but there are two shops there and people didn’t seem to realize you could go next door and not really wait. The only difference was chicken broth or pork broth. We were uncomfortably full after dinner, and went back to our hotel with the intention of cleaning up and heading back out. We ended up staying in for the night and watching a couple of movies on HBO, which was all good by me!

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Sunday

After our slower Saturday, we were ready to make the most of our Sunday. We headed down to Tribeca to meet up for brunch at Sarabeth’s with another friend who made the move to New York after college. Derek is my college roommate Stephanie’s younger brother and we had such a great time catching up with him! He was nice enough to walk us over to the High Line, and we walked past the “Friends” apartment building on our way. We hadn’t been up on the High Line before and it was definitely a cool stop to make, as descriptions hadn’t really done it justice for people who come from Wisconsin.

From there, we were pretty uncomfortable in the heat, as we didn’t bring appropriate stuff to wear. We ended up hopping in a cab to get over to Soho and we had to buy cheap tank tops from H&M to get through the rest of the day. We stopped in some stores but probably spent the bulk of our time in & Other Stories. I was semi-familiar with the brand but had never seen their stuff in person and we were all over it! Stayed tuned for more about them!

Once we had our fill of shopping we walked over towards Greenwich, which has such beautiful streets to just amble through. We found a happy hour advertising margaritas which sounded like the best idea ever in that heat and sat on their sidewalk seating drinking margs and eating some guacamole. We scrolled through the tickets app one more time but waited too long and no shows were intriguing enough to us to buy tickets.

From there we took the subway back to our hotel and got cleaned up. We had some wine and snacks and then decided to go get some pizza for a late dinner. We’ve eaten at a place near Times Square twice now, called Angelo’s Pizza. I think it’s pretty good pizza, especially for not leaving Times Square area. From there we called it a night.

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Monday

We slept in, and then ran in Central Park again, but this time we made it up and around the Reservoir which we hadn’t done yet. It was misting out but still beautiful to be in the park. We stopped and grabbed a yummy Bagel and Lox sandwich on our way back to our hotel at a hole in the wall called Lunch Box. From there we showered and packed up to check out of the hotel. We gave them our bags to hold for the afternoon and headed down to find a Nordstrom Rack. We usually try to stop there when we’re in New York because they have more of a large shoe size collection in the city.

We got off the subway at Union Square and were pleasantly surprised to see a fresh air market set up. We strolled through and then headed to the Rack, where we did have some luck finding shoes – stay tuned to see what we found there! We wanted to explore areas we hadn’t previously so we kept heading south from there and made our way to Katz’s Deli, which is pretty well known. Even though it was 2 p.m. at this point there was still a line out the door. We grabbed a pastrami Reuben to split and it was plenty big!

We were wanting cheesecake but Katz’s didn’t look like the answer so we walked down toward Nolita and found Eileen’s Special Cheesecake. Totally recommend this spot – they are mini round cheesecakes and completely delicious. We were walking a bit more and ended up back in the Soho shopping area but only stopped in one place. I realized we were going right past Dominique Ansel’s Bakery and mentioned it to my Mom. We had just enough time to stop in and grab an almond pastry to eat in the airport. We hopped on the subway to get back to the hotel and had our only creepy experience of an old man blatantly trying to take pictures of us.

We brushed that off and made it to the hotel where they had our transportation to the airport waiting for us, which happened to be a limo. It was a completely unexpected fun ending to our awesome girls trip! Plus on our flight home, I ended up getting the exit row for my mom and I, with the bonus inner seat that has no seat in front of it. Tall person victory!

I know I listed a lot of stuff, but if anyone has any questions about anything else New York related, I’d love to hear them and see if I can answer! We’d also love to hear your New York recommendations, sound off below!

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