Category: travel

Saturday and Sunday were pretty low-key – I really saw a lot on Friday! Saturday morning breakfast was at Cafe Gitane, a lovely little French cafe near the hotel, on Mott St. I had the baked eggs – yum.

After breakfast, we took the subway up to the Upper East Side and walked around a bit before going to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. They’re under renovation so they only had 2 exhibitions on – Set In Style featured really gorgeous and shiny! jewelry from Van Cleef & Arpels. One thing that was particularly interesting to me was the great iPad integration…no more audiosets, but an iPad and headphones for closeups, videos and details about selected pieces. The other exhibit on was Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, which I found really inspiring and interesting.

Afterwards it was lunch at Hummus Kitchen – not a particularly amazing meal compared to the others, but I was hungry and Really Had to Eat, so it fit the bill perfectly. The mint lemonade slushie was yummy!

And what trip to NYC would be complete without some Central Park action? I bought a piece of cheesecake from Lady M bakery and ate it in the park. It was really too cold to do that for long (which I was sad about), so more walking, walking, walking including checking out FAO Schwartz (crazy busy!), Times Square (whoa – so not my thing) and basically checking out touristy areas really quickly and moving on.

That evening was spent walking around Williamsburg and having actual green vegetables at M Noodle Shop. Their veggie dumplings were really good, and I liked the sesame pancake with veggies too.

Hmmmm I just realized I don’t have a single photo from Sunday! It was a fitting lazy Sunday – lined up at Doughnut Plant for a Valhrona Chocolate and a cinnamon bun, got bagels from Kossar’s Bialys and ate many carbs sitting in the pedestrian park on Allen St. Walked around Chinatown and Little Italy, checked out Dean and Deluca (i love grocery stores!) and I got my black & white cookie from Donut Pub – man those things are huge. After dinner at Angelica’s Kitchen (a great vegetarian place), my companion headed back to Boston so I went to the movies and watched Jane Eyre. I only recently read it so watching the movie was fun (though a bit lonely).

And so I have another photo, a preview of what I did on Tuesday!

Hey y’all! I just got back from my 6-day jaunt to NYC last night, and it was SUPER AWESOME. I had so much fun, walked allllll around and ate everything in sight. At some points it felt like I would never want to eat again, but we all know how that goes. I’m gonna have to split up my adventure into a few blog posts with lots of photos!

Today: Thursday and Friday.

Left Toronto mid-morning and got to NY Penn Station around 1:30. First thing to do? Eat, of course (pretty much why I went to NYC). We hit up No.7 Sub while still dragging around luggage since it’s near the station! I had General Tso’s Tofu and my companion had the Eggplant Parm. DELICIOUS!

Dropped off stuff at the hotel and went a’walking. The hotel was really well situated on E. Houston, right on the subway and really accessible for walking to different neighbourhoods. Spent some time at the MOMA design store and Sur La Table, just randomly poking around in Soho and Nolita. One cool place I stumbled upon was Kiosk, a really interesting sorta random stuff store up a mysterious staircase. One of the things I really loved about this trip to NYC was seeing really cool design stuff and the love of good design in general.

Had delicious Motorino pizza for dinner then just kept walking the evening away! I think we had Pinkberry on St Marks Pl for dessert.

Seriously the pizza is so good. I went twice in 5 days.

Friday morning breakfast was coffee and beautiful pastries at Ceci-Cela on Spring. I’d say it was the best croissant I’ve had outside France.

Walked walked walked and ended up on the High Line, an elevated railroad track that’s been converted to a beautiful urban park.

There’s a nice sitting area with basically a viewing platform over traffic with a great view.

Ended up at the craziness (and deliciousness) that is Eataly for lunch – took a little while to figure out what was going on. It was super crowded! It’s basically a large marketplace with different areas for different foods (like meats, cheeses, baked goods, pasta) and sit-down eating areas. Lunch at La Verdure (Eataly’s vegetarian/vegetable focused restaurant area) was amazing.

Roasted peppers stuffed with perfect risotto.

One of many cheese cases.

Took the subway across to Brooklyn and wandered for awhile, and ended up spending a few nice relaxing hours chilling with beer at Bierkraft in Park Slope – great beers on tap and tons in bottles too, and there’s a nice communal seating area for drinking your purchased beer!

Chilly stroll along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade at sunset, then we waited outside in the FREEZING COLD (seriously the entire trip was freezing) for 40 minutes to have pizza at Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge – the view was lovely at night, but again, super cold!

And then upon getting out of the subway at Spring St, we found a lovely tiny chocolate shop with a comfy couch that had chocolate cake, hot chocolate and lovely tea. Ahh, perfect.