Well, like I said before, I had originally planned to do sort of a daily update while we were in the city, but we turned out to be otherwise occupied and didn’t have much time for blogging. Even after that, I had still planned on doing a more detailed wrap up, but I think I’ll just hit some highlights and the things that I still remember thinking “I should blog about this” about…
Friday night we got in in the evening after losing most of the day to flying and the time change, and just went out to the nearest “nice” Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. I put nice in quotes, because while it was on the higher price end of the scale and definitely aiming for a more hip and trendy crowd, I personally felt the food left a bit to be desired. I think part of it may have been that we come from So Cal and it’s tough to compare the Mexican food here to there, but the other thing was that I think they were going for the “fusion” thing, where they put their own unique spin or signature on a particular classic style. While it’s interesting, I think a lot of times that just doesn’t work. Sorry, I don’t remember the name of the place so that I can recommend avoiding it, but I think for now I’ll just recommend not going for Mexican food in NYC at all - there’s plenty of other stuff to choose from.
We also talked a bit about what we wanted to do the next day, since we literally had no plans going into the weekend. I actually found that I preferred that a bit, since you can just relax and take it as you go. We had taken the bus tour and hit all the major tourist attractions the last time we were there, and I’d still recommend that for first time visitors just to get your bearings and check out where everything is, but this time now that we were more familiar, it was much more convenient to take the subway everywhere, since it takes you within blocks of anywhere you need to go, is constantly running, and is nearly free (relative to all other options) if you pick up an unlimited metro card.
We decided on Saturday (after a Starbucks breakfast) to head for the downtown TCKTS booth to see what half-price tickets for shows were available. I highly recommend hitting the downtown location, as it opens at 11am rather than 3pm like the Times Square one. In case you’re not familiar, this is a place where they sell extra tickets at a huge discount, with the only drawback being that the ultra popular shows sometimes do not have tickets available. It’s absolutely the way to go, though - the price is so much better and most shows were still available.
We picked up tickets for Curtains that night and a matinée of 110 In the Shade for Sunday, both of which were excellent. From there we took the train over to Coney Island for a day at the beach and the aquarium. Later we headed back and grabbed some dinner at a fancy steak place before the evening’s show. The next day we headed up to the upper east side, walked from there through Central Park to the upper west side for breakfast and walked around there for a bit, before heading back to midtown for the matinée. After that we did a bit of shopping and then headed downtown for dinner in Little Italy.
On Monday morning after breakfast we headed over to the museum and spent some time checking that out until it was time to go back and grab our bags from the hotel and hop back on the train to JFK. I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some stuff all over here, but that’s what I get for waiting a week to post about it.
