A New York State Of Mind
A New York State Of Mind
As I mentioned last week I had planned and booked a long weekend trip to New York City with my son, so last Friday we both headed out to LAX for a short fun trip to Manhattan. Even though it went by very quickly and we are home already, we both felt it was the right amount of days for NYC since we have both been there numerous times before and we have seen all the tourist type attractions at least one time if not more. This trip was all about spending time together to enjoy shopping in the city, getting inspired by some museum exhibitions and energized by the vibe that is so unique to NYC.
Our flight Friday to JFK was smooth with no delays, which was great, and we actually arrived in the city in time to settle into our hotel and have a nice dinner. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt at 42nd and Lexington right next to the Grand Central Station and next door to the Chrysler Building, which is one of my favorite buildings in the city. We had stayed at the Hyatt once before a few years ago and thought it was a nice hotel with a good central location so that is why we chose it again.
Saturday started out over cast but developed into a beautiful sunny day and we did a lot of walking in mid-town with our first stop being Barney’s which is a must for any visit to Manhattan, especially this time of the year when they have lots of sales. Well, lucky me I scored with a beautiful “Theory” blazer that was on sale, I will definitely style it and feature it in one of my future blog stories. We continued on to Bloomingdales and stepped into a lot of other shops in between. It was such a beautiful day we could not help but stop by Central Park for lunch and some photos and then we headed up to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) to check out the Andy Warhol exhibit of “Campbell Soup Cans” and other works. We finished the day with a delicious dinner at Scalini Fedeli italian restaurant in TriBeCa. I highly recommend this restaurant for great food and service and value for a prixe-fixe meal.
Sunday was another beautiful day and after a quick breakfast in Little Italy, we set off walking through Chinatown and finally to our main destination, Soho. Even though I still really love and enjoy this area, it is sad to see that all the unique small specialty boutiques have disappeared which was one of the main reasons I used to love so much about Soho. Now all the stores are major brands that we all see everywhere and it has lost its unique appeal a little bit now for us. This is the sad result of landlord greed and how small specialty stores can’t survive the high rents and lack of high priced item sales to pay those rents. Regardless, we still enjoy Soho and we had a great shopping day, with a yummy lunch at the Mercer Kitchen and then later that evening dinner at the Balthazar, both restaurants have been there for a long time but I still love eating at both places and highly recommend them.
Monday we explored the Meat packing district and walked some of the High Line, which is an elevated park that is very popular and for good reason. It’s actually an old rail line that has been re-purposed over the past decade as a 1.45 mile-long green space, running from Meatpacking district to the northern edge of Chelsea. It was inspired by a similar project in Paris “Promenade Plantee” that was completed in 1993. We only walked a part of it as it is quite a long walk and we wanted to cover other areas like West Village and Greenwich Village and Chelsea. Even though we got some serious rain and thunderstorms that afternoon, we managed to see a lot and it was great fun.
Our last day was Tuesday but we only had a half day to accomplish everything as our flight was at 5pm. We were in a “New York City State Of Mind” and I really wanted to see this exhibit that is being held at the Met called “China through the looking glass”. I am so glad we made the effort to get an early start because it was well worth it, especially for me. Look out next week, I will have a full blog story about this exhibit.
We took a lot of pictures on the trip and it has been hard to edit them for this blog story, but I have included some of our highlights below for you to see. I had a fantastic time with my son in one of my favorite cities in the world and I can’t wait to go back, but I have to say it feels great to be back home.
Looking forward to hearing some of your thoughts and comments about NYC.
