New York City

First, a digression. Growing up whenever I heard “New York City” this played in my head:

But now I can only hear it like this:

I suppose actual New Yorkers hear neither but as a Connecticut kid who drifted up Boston way, that’s irrelevant to me!

Anyway, we planned a trip to New York City (read that in your mind however you want) for April break. Why NYC? Mostly it seemed like Lorelei was finally old enough to enjoy going there, and we had some Grand-puppy-parents willing to dog sitting along the way.

Transportation

I don’t love driving into NYC plus parking is always either annoying or expensive, so we planned on taking the train. My preferred way to get in is to park somewhere in Connecticut and take a Metro North train in to Grand Central, but our hotel plans had us staying on the Upper West Side so a train into Penn Station made more sense.

So, Amtrak! I took Amtrak all the time in college. It… was ok. Sometimes trains would be horribly late, sometimes way oversold to the point of standing room only. But when it works, it works well.

Well, this time it didn’t work. Our train into city was about an hour late getting in, and our train out was cancelled. Like, there was no train at all. While we solved this by getting a car back to our car to Connecticut. If we had planned to train all the way back to Boston not only were the trains cancelled from the South, a part of bridge fell on the tracks to the North. I want to love trains but they make it so hard!

Accommodations

I knew we wanted to stay on the Upper West Side, which has limited hotel options. In the end we stayed at the Hotel Beacon, which is very close to the 1 2 3 lines and Central Park, and has spacious rooms with full kitchens. It was almost like having a little apartment in the city for a few days.

Activities

The main thing we had planned for the trip was going to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre. It was great!

Being near Central Park we did the New York Museum of Natural History one day.

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These animals aren't alive

And the Central Park Zoo on another, nicer, day.

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These animals are alive!

Otherwise we rambled about, litterally in The Ramble which I’d never walked through, did some shopping, ate a lot of bagels….

Food

• Alice’s Tea Cup. Cute place. Apparently we’re trying to make “tea time” a thing we do on vacation now. Not fancy but the food was good.
• Pop up Bagels. I guess this is a chain, but it was around the corner from the hotel so it was our first bagel spot. Bagels were soft and warm, cream cheese was great. Butter spread was not whipped butter like I expected but like, a whole stick of butter, which was a bit much.
• Viand Cafe. Diner food, downstairs from the hotel. Decent food with the bonus of having tons of seating.
• Pizza Collective. Great square pizza. I had a Carbonara pizza, it was amazing.
• Frame. Croffles! Cute place, full of people taking up entire tables by themselves. We usually brought breakfast back to our spacious hotel because finding a table for 3 is surprisingly hard.
• Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys. I’ve never had a bialy before, so we got some to try here… along with some bagels. Both were good!
• Parm. Known for their spicy rotini, I guess? Tasty. Loaded up on carbs then did an incredibly short walk through Central Park.
• HEYTEA. I mention this place in passing because it was a bit cramped, I glanced at the menu and ordered some pistachio thing but it was heavenly. Apparently people post videos of themselves drinking it? I sucked it down in the street like an animal.

And to complete the “pretending like we live here” experience we grabbed some groceries from Zabar’s and Fairway Market, both within walking distance.

Conclusion

I like New York. I’ve always liked New York. It’s a great city to just walk around and find stuff. I think if I actually lived there I’d be worn down before a year was out, but to visit and pretend is quite fun.

Lorelei gave the trip a 6/10, but she said we lost 4 points for not picking a hotel with a pool. I’ll take it.