Wow, it has been a hot minute since I’ve posted on the blog. I was trying my hand at Youtube and y’all I just don’t think I’m cut out for that. Hahaha, it was a hot mess.
Anyway, I wanted to post on the blog today and share something super duper fun with y’all. So, if you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I spent the past 4 days in NYC! And I wanted to share a travel diary with y’all. I’ll be sharing what I and my friends did.
So first of all, we stayed in a super trendy hotel! It was a block from Times Square and while the hotel itself was great, next time I go I would like to stay in a different location. I visited SoHo and Tribecca and I would really like to stay in one of those locations.
However, Row NYC was a great hotel to stay at! They had a restaurant in the lobby as well as another restaurant beside it. The one beside it is called City Kitchen and had serval great options such as Japanese food, Mexican food, Mederterrianian food, and some other options.
Day 1:
We got into the city on Saturday morning. Our flight landed at JFK airport at around 8 and by 9:30 we were exploring the city. Since we stayed close to Times Square and wanted to see a play on Broadway, our first stop was the discounted ticket booth. This ticket booth sells tickets for many of the plays on Broadway. We didn’t end up getting tickets from them because they were only selling matinee tickets and we wanted to see a show at night.
After we left the ticket booth we headed up a few blocks and ate lunch at Ellen’s Stardust Diner. This place is super cool. The line was wrapped around the corner, however, the turnover time was decent. We waited for probably 35-40 minutes. My favorite part of this place was the atmosphere. The waitstaff are Broadway hopefuls and they sing while they wait on you! The food wasn’t bad either!
After lunch, we headed uptown to Central Park. It is hard to walk everywhere in New York, but if you’re able it is such a great way to see the city. Central Park was beautiful. We walked from Columbus Circle to the Met.
We ended up at the Met and spent at least an hour and a half there. We were so exhausted we decided that we would take the subway back downtown and grab some food for dinner and call it a day.
We ordered food from Shake Shack (which we did serval times on this trip lol) and called it a night sorta early.
Day 2:
We had Broadway shows at night on Sunday, so we spent the morning exploring. We walked the Highline! It was SUPER windy but really beautiful and I highly recommend doing it!!
We walked through Chelsea Market! It was all decorated for Christmas and so cute! Next time I go to NYC I wanna spend more time going into the shops here. After we walked through the market, we took the Subway to SoHo and y’all, I think SoHo was my favorite place in New York. I loved it so much!!
We walked around SoHo for a while, grabbed a coffee, and found Taylor Swift’s apartment (which was a really big deal for me lol). Then we Ubered to China Town where Harry Styles had a popup shop in celebration of his new album, Fine Line! (which is AMAZING btw) Sadly, I didn’t get to actually go in the popup shop, the line was around the block and we didn’t have time to wait.
I had some chips and guac from City Kitchen and it was delicious! We ate in our hotel room and then my friend Lauren and I got ready to go see Chicago!
On our walk to the Ambassador Theater, we stopped by the Richard Rogers Theather. That is where Hamilton is playing and I’m not gonna lie it gave me so much joy to see that! Anyway, Chicago was GREAT!! I highly recommend seeing it!
After the musical, we went back to our hotel and went to bed because we had an early morning on Monday!
Day 3:
Monday morning came early, we left our hotel at 5:45 to go to the Today Show. It was actually really cool to walk through the city early in the morning. Since it was so dark when we got to Rockefeller Plaza, I got a good picture of the tree!
It was pretty cold Monday morning, but it wasn’t too bad. I had so much fun watching the Today Show live!
After the Today Show, we went to see the Rockettes and you guys it was SO GOOD. It was absolutely amazing!!
Then we went to the Top of the Rock, it was a perfect way to see the city.
After Top of the Rock, we went Downtown to the 9/11 memorial and museum. We stopped at Shake Shack before we went to the museum. The museum itself was really hard to walk through (I’m an emotional person and the stuff there is just so heavy and heartbreaking) but I’m so glad I did it.
After we did the museum, we took the subway to 5th Avenue. We saw the Saks light display and Cartier. It was really cool to see that. After that, it was back to the hotel for us.
Day 4:
Tuesday was our last day, we left our hotel at 10 and went to NBC to do the studio tour. They were sadly out of tickets, so we didn’t get to do that.
We then took the subway (we did that a lot and tbh it was great, it’s cheap and easy to use) and went to Macy’s. We walked around all 9 floors. It was so overwhelming but so much fun!! Then we walked to Bryant Park. It has a Christmas market. It was rainy and the ice skating rink was closed so it wasn’t as fun as I hoped. But, it was still really cool!
After Bryant Park, we went back to City Kitchen for a late lunch before we left. We ended up leaving the city an hour early than we planned to go back to JFK and I’m glad we did, traffic was so bad.
All in all, I had the best time in NYC and I’m ready to go back. It is such a fun place to visit.
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you guys enjoy hearing about my trip!
See ya soon!
xoxo Em
