Adventures: NYC Part I

Good morning Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here. Your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite. :) Not! But while I'm preparing this post, I'm rewatching the first season of Gossip Girl and just missing NYC.

DAY 1:

We took a red eye flight to Newark and ended up getting to New York around 12:30pm. We stayed at the Lexington Hotel off of 48th and Lexington and were able to check in early even though we weren't due to check in until 3pm. We decided to rest for a little bit and then began exploring the surrounding area on our way to Ippudo for ramen. We ended up passing by the Rockefeller Center.

 We stopped at Ippudo Westside for dinner. Luckily we were one of the first people there and didn't have to wait at all! When we left however, it was a whole different story. This place was PACKED.

sazuraku and sapporo

hirata buns - pork
the meat inside was delicious. the sauce a little strange. bun consistency was too hard.
(wow... just read what i wrote and man... lollll)

karaka-men

akamaru modern
for a ramen that isn't spicy, it's extremely delicious! it has what I dub the "ratatouille effect" which is the feeling you get when you eat something and it makes you feel like a child being comforted by the tastiest homecooked meal (as in the end of the Disney movie Ratatuoille).

After dinner we went around Times Square.

We decided to stop for some ice cream in Bryant Park.

We ended up trying to find the Empire State Building to see how long the wait was to go up. It was about an hour so we decided to pass and walked back to our hotel to rest up for our jam-packed full day in New York.

DAY 2:

Started off the day by going to the Top of the Rock. Bought our tickets at the self-serve area but we couldn't get in until 12:30-12:45p so we decided to go grab some bagels at Ess-A-Bagel.

this bagel costs 11.75 (it was called some kind of like super nova or something like that lol)

everything bagel with scallion cream cheese

We headed back to the Top of the Rock to go up to the top. There are 3 separate levels. The first 2 are surrounded by glass and the 3rd has a railing that is about boob height to me. The views are spectacular! I would highly recommend going here. You get such a great view of Central Park and the Empire State Building.

After the Top of the Rock, we went to Central Park. I've been to New York before but it was just a quick stop in Times Square, we went on a boat tour and to the Empire State Building. On our way to Central Park, we stopped to take a photo at this sign. I didn't even know it was in New York!

We went row boating in Central Park. Let me just say be prepared to exercise! Thank goodness Tony was ok to row the entire time. I rowed for 2 seconds and ended up pulling the entire oar out of it's "socket"! Thank goodness I didn't let go of it into the water! On our way around, we saw all these turtles sunbathing!

After an hour of rowing around, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for Matilda! I wanted to chance to see at least one Broadway show when we were in New York and Miss Estee (essiebutton) loved Matilda (even more than Wicked) so I decided that's what we would see. We did stop for some gelato on the Upper East Side on our walk back to the hotel.

After Matilda, we headed to NoHo to a dive bar by the name of Von. Didn't get any pictures from that part of the night. It was quite the fun night! I will end it here for now!

to be continued...