New Yoak City

Nate's never experienced The Concrete Jungle. We decided to take advantage of the $99 JetBlue tickets and get away from this little town for a weekend. 

I guess we brought some Texas weather with us, too, cause it never got below freezing while we were there :) 40s and 50s all weekend. It was great.

Nate's friend Chad was kind enough to let us stay at his place all weekend. I thought I left prepared with exactly how we needed to get there from the JFK airport, but my directions were very off and it took us twice as long to get to Chad's apt than it should have. (AKA 3 hrs on multiple subway lines...) Alas, we made it and dropped our bags off and went out to explore the town before it got too late.

First stop was Rockefeller Plaza. Yes, touristy, but we have to do touristy things this weekend, cause Nate's never been...so cut me some slack.

The MoMA has free Fridays, so obviously we took advantage of that our first evening in the city. Nate loved reliving his humanities classes all over again...but really, he got a big kick out of it.

Somehow the subway smelled much worse this time around than I ever remember it smelling before. Maybe it was just the time of year, but my goooooodness it was horrific. The rats down there are gigantic.

Although, the people watching on the subways never lets me down. We witnessed a number of different activities that I'm sure we will remember for the rest of forever. I think my favorites were the times when angry black parents were yelling and then laughing at their 2 yr old daughter. Yeah. Real life. Real crazy.

Of course, we had to step into Time Square for a few minutes. We ate Shake Shack right before and our bellies were very happy with us, so it gave us a little extra adrenaline to handle the madness and the bright lights. Chad was hiding the entire time because apparently people who actually live in the city wouldn't be caught dead in Time Square. Sorry Chad ;) Way to take one for the team.

Right after, we skipped over to the Roosevelt Island Air Tram so we could witness the real majesty of the twinkling lights of Manhattan. If you've never taken this air tram back and forth to Manhattan, please do it next time you're in NYC. It's glorious at night.

btw. that's totes a carmel apple cider...in case you were judging.

9/11 memorial was our first stop Saturday morning. I didn't realize what a hassle it was going to be to get inside, but it was totally worth it. 

After the memorial, we went a little more south and into Brooklyn so we could walk across the Promenade. It's this walkway right on the edge of the New York harbor. The Manhattan skyline was amazing with such great weather that morning.

Also, very windy, but I can't complain cause at least it wasn't snowing.

The neighborhoods all along this area of Brooklyn are so cool. Most of the fancy walkups have been remodeled in the last ten years or so and I fell in love with all of them.

I convinced Nate that once he starts making 2mill a year then we can move into this one :)

Nate loved these little garage doors over near Chelsea :)

Chelsea also happens to be home to the famous High Line. One of my favorite places in all of New York, duh. We took our time meandering through Chelsea and then up to the High Line. There are tons of amazing art galleries tucked away into the alleys below. I was getting kind of late, so most were closing...but we made sure we got into the Klein Sun Gallery to see this one:

I mostly just loved all the food we ate. Sorry for the crappy picture, but this is the only photo we have with any food we indulged. We ate pizza for lunch AND dinner on Saturday, and I'm definitely not mad about it. Grimaldi's was our first meal and then this picture was taken at Luzzo's for dinner. Both were TO DIE FOR. I recommend NOT going to the Grimaldi's in Brooklyn because it's infested with tourists. The wait was long, but the pizza was soooo goooooood so I didn't care. But if you want to save time, just go to one in Manhattan. Nate and his friend Chad voted that Luzzo's was slightly better, but they're were both so divine and I couldn't choose which one I liked best. Also, I had to stop at Eataly for some gelato before dinner. Had to. Couldn't miss it.

We didn't go to church on Sunday, cause it's vaca and like, you're only in New York for like two days...soo yeah. But we made a pit stop in and out of the Temple/church so that counts, right?

We also walked basically the entirety of Central Park on Sunday, so that's like, super great Sabbath day behavior. Totally. Observing nature and all that.

We had a blast, but New York is definitely a different place in the winter. I love it so much more when there aren't huge piles of black snow piled up on the sidewalks and dirty snow water leaking and running all through the streets and subways. Love ya, but no thanks. I'll keep NYC as a place to visit rather than a place I'd want to live year-round.