a weekend in NYC!

 

it had been waaay too long since my last trip to NYC. this visit was long overdue! that city has my heart!

while it was a fun trip- nyc is stunning in december with all the lights, and decorations everywhere, it’s also fuh-reezing! it was so much more difficult to walk around in cold and rain. i can’t wait to go when it’s a bit warmer but that’s still sooo far away!

anyway…my usual agenda in nyc is shop, shop , eat cupcakes, and shop. but this trip was more touristy so we could check out all the holiday decorations. there was still a lot of cupcake tasting though :

so…the food…

when we arrived in the city our first destination was “burgers and cupcakes.” if you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know that i LOVE burgers AND cupcakes- so this was a natural choice. the restaurant executes both pretty well, but not amazingly. i still love the concept…so i was happy overall. i had a salmon burger (with avocado), some french fries, and a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. the avocado was fresh and ripe which was earned extra bonus points- and the fries were SO good! the cupcake was small but dense with extra buttery buttercream. yum!

next, we checked in to our hotel and had ourselves quite an adventure trying to get to battery park to see the statue of liberty. some of the metro lines weren’t running…so it took forever trying to figure out how to get there! the sun was setting as we walked along the water so while i was dissapointed that it was getting dark- it also made for a really pretty view of the statue of liberty.

we walked around a bit more, paused at the WTC and browsed at century 21. from there we hopped back on the subway towards canal street where we checked out cheap accessories, bad knockoffs and bootleg dvds. oddly, i was not in much of a shopping mood today- i must be getting sick! or maybe i was cranky and hungry 😛 thankfully there were plenty of chinese bakeries along the route. i stopped in and got a milk tea boba, a steamed roast pork bun and a snack for later.

next we walked around soho and shopped a little bit…i was really sad to see my favorite little corner of stores had closed for the day though 😦 (face stockholm, tarina tarantino & anna sui!) but i bet my bank account let out a huge sigh of relief. oh well!

next up, we headed to the east village for some delicious ukranian food! i was so excited to get some golumpki and pierogis in me! i had a veggie combo plate which came with soup, salad, stuffed cabbage, 2 cheese pierogi, 2 potato pierogi and sour cream. basically a lot of food! my stuffed cabbage was basically mushroom wild rice covered with cream of mushroom…i wish it came with tomato sauce instead. but other than that- it was a very delicious  meal. not exactly pretty though- as u can see!

next, we walked around the east village a bit, took the train to grand central and took in the station, took in the sites outside, and sat in bryant park and watched the ice skaters before heading back to the hotel for a little breather. yup! the night still wasn’t over!

there was a quick walk through times square, and then a trip to the top of the empire state building! the experience on top is a bit different at 1AM than during the day! there were no lines at ALL and only a few people around. very cool! i even witnessed a man popping the question to his gf (now fiance!).

i bought a couple snacks while i was out earlier and had the lemon roll from the chinese bakery on canal street. and also tasted a “banana” cake from a little japanese shop in the east village. this had a little bit of sweet white bean inside. yum.

and that my friends was day one of my little new york adventure…will be back with sunday’s recap after a little break 🙂