Weekend in NYC

We wanted to get away for a short weekend so Chris decided we would go someplace we had been plenty of times before but never fully enjoyed: New York City.  We would sneak in for a long weekend without anyone knowing we were there.  Chris booked a hotel room for a few nights months before.  When he saw the $55 per night parking charges he decided that we would not be driving in.  Instead we parked our car in the parking garage in downtown Haverhill, MA, and took the train to NY.  We boarded our train right in Haverhill for the 45 or so minute ride into Boston where we would board another train for New York City.  Unfortunately the train from Haverhill arrives at a different station than the train for NY so we had to take two subway rides between the two.  We purposely chose a train that would not leave for NY until over an hour after our train from Haverhill arrived, giving us plenty of time to make the connection.  As it turns out we had way more than enough time as we arrived at South Station where we would be leaving from, about 45 minutes before the train was to leave.  Since they would not let us board yet we just sat around waiting.  While most people waited in the center of the station looking up at the board that tells you what track the train would be leaving from, Chris had a pretty good idea of what track we’d be departing from so we were able to wait a little closer to the train than most everyone else.  As a result, when the track number was announced we found ourselves about 6^th or so in line to board with 100 or more people behind us.  We settled in for the 4 hour trip into NYC.  It was not snowing when we left Boston but about an hour outside of NY it did start to snow pretty heavily.  When we arrived at Penn Station in NY we debated whether or not we should take a cab to our hotel or take the subway.  We chose the subway which was about a two block walk from Penn Station and another two block walk once we got off.  Pulling our carryon sized luggage through the streets was not much of an issue.  It was cold but there was not much snow on the sidewalks in mid-town.  When we got off the subway in Chinatown it was a different story.  It was now snowing harder and the sidewalks were not as heavily travelled as they had been before getting on the subway.  On top of that we immediately walked a block in the wrong direction when we got out of the subway.  What should have been a quick 2 block walk was now a 4 block walk through the snow.  The snow was deep enough that our suitcases had to be carried rather than wheeled.  It was also very windy and cold which did not make for a fun walk.  We finally made it to our hotel and settled in a little over 6 hours after leaving home.  Sure it was not the quickest trip to NY but it was much more relaxing than driving.  Our hotel was a Marriott on the edge of Chinatown near the Manhattan Bridge.  Had we been on the other side of the hotel we probably would have heard the subways rumbling over the bridge all night long but we were on the good side and the noise was not an issue.  We had a nice little view of the street below from our room.

The view from our room

While we were kind of tired, we wanted to get some tickets for a Broadway show before settling in for the night so we headed for one of the TKTS booths that NYC has.  At these locations you can buy same day or next day Broadway tickets for usually up to half price. The more famous and crowded location is in Times Square but we learned there were two other locations, one in Brooklyn and one at the South Street Seaport.  We learned that the Brooklyn office, which was much closer than Times Square, closed at 6 PM and it was already about 5:20. We quickly put our jackets on and headed back to the subway.  The train trip into Brooklyn ended up being less than 5 minutes and we were lucky to see that as soon as we exited the subway the TKTS booth was immediately in front of us.  There was not a single person in line.  In Times Square you could easily wait in line for more than 30 minutes.  We were not sure if it was the time of day, the time of year, the weather, or the fact that we were in Brooklyn but we were glad to see that we were able to step right up to the window and get our tickets form Sunday’s matinee performance of Motown the musical.  We had tried before coming to town to get tickets for this show as this week many Broadway shows were participating in a buy one get one free sale.  Unfortunately all of the buy 1 get 1 free tickets were sold out. But by getting these tickets at 50% off we paid exactly the same price we would have paid had we bought the tickets at home.  We may have even saved on service charges by doing it this way.

Brooklyn TKTS location

By this time we were craving food, real NY food.  We decided to grab a pizza to take home with us.  We ended up spotting a 99 cent per slice pizza place and we got a pie to take back to the hotel.  Don’t judge us on the 99 cent pizza.  While some NY pizza certainly is better than others, there really is no pizza in NY that is bad.  We stopped in a small bodega/deli/store (whatever it was) across the street from the hotel and bought ourselves some beer to wash it down. We then went upstairs, ate our pizza, drank our beer and went to sleep.

On Sunday we had a pretty busy day planned.  We got up a little earlier than we normally might have and made our way to one of the larger Dim Sum halls in Chinatown, Jing Fong.  We had been to this place before per the recommendation of someone who worked with Chris who lives in Chinatown.  The restaurant from the outside looks tiny.  You enter what appears to be a small building and go up an escalator to a large hall that probably seats 500 people.  Women come around with push carts filled with all kinds of small dishes that are easily recognizable like dumplings, rice, eggrolls, and other things, as well as lots of not so recognizable food plus some that you may recognize but might not be too crazy about trying (such as chicken feet!).  The women pushing the carts do not usually speak much English but we get by just fine.  What makes this particular restaurant more authentic feeling is that most of the diners are Chinese.  That told us that we were having good, authentic Chinese food.

Jing Fong restaurant

Lady coming around with pushcarts to choose food from

As you choose your food they stamp your receipt and you pay at the end of the meal.

After what turned into brunch we headed back to the hotel to pick a few things up and then we headed across town to take a walk on the High Line.  We took the subway and we got off at the 8^th Ave. stop we noticed quite a few bronze sculptures inside of the subway station.  We later learned that these were part of a public artwork display inside of the station.  We wondered how many people pass by those sculptures every day without even noticing them. 

The High Line is a park in NYC built on top of an elevated section of a former freight railroad in Manhattan.  They last used the railroad in the early 1980’s and ever since the railroad sat there as an eyesore in downtown NY.  Finally several years back they decided to turn it into an elevated greenway.  Today you can walk a mile long section of the former railroad.  The developers of the park actually left sections of the railroad in place to preserve some of the history behind the park.  There was more public art displayed along the High Line in the form of sculptures every few hundred feet or so.  We thought that added a nice touch to the park.  While walking the length of the park we stepped down onto street level to step into Chelsea Market.  Chelsea Market is a former factory converted into an indoor shopping space.  The factory used to make Oreo cookies but today is home to the shops that we browsed through as we got out of the cold.  For the second time on our trip we noticed a line of bikes parked along the curb, all with the Citibank logo on the side.  We read on a nearby sign that these bikes were available to rent by the half hour, hour or day.  You could pick one up at one location and return it to any other location in the city.  While it probably wasn’t the best method of transportation in the winder we figured that come warmer weather they would be a popular option for getting around.

Some of the sculptures along the high line

Along the high line with the old tracks still in place.

View from the high line

More art.

Looking west down one of the streets from the High Line

Where one of the spur tracks led into a building

Old gaslamps inside of Chelsea Market 

Glasswear inside of a kitchen supply store

Entrance to the market

Citibikes

Empire State Building

After finishing our walk up the High Line we took a bus a few blocks north as it was getting close to showtime for the musical that we had bought tickets for the previous day.  While waiting for the bus we stopped to watch some crazy kids playing football in the snow in Chelsea Park, some of them wearing only shorts and T-shirts.  We arrived at the theater about a half hour before showtime and we were pleasantly surprised at how great our seats were.  We were in the 2^nd row just off to the side of the stage.  The show was very entertaining and we enjoyed it a lot.  Since we were only a couple of blocks from Times Square we figured we had to stop by and take it all in.  We decided that anyone who ever visits New York must see Times Square for the first time at night.  While it is still great during the day there is nothing quite like it at night.

We then headed back to the subway.  We wanted to drop some things off at the hotel and grab a bite to eat before heading to our next destination: the Brooklyn Bridge. 

We found a nice little café near the hotel where we ate dinner before heading for the bridge. We again got on the subway for the 5 minute ride into Brooklyn.  We had always wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge but for various reasons we never got around to it.  Now that we were staying in the city we decided we would do it, even if it was the middle of winter.  We knew we wanted to walk from Brooklyn into Manhattan, as the views would be much better that way.  We were also fortunate to have a clear night, very much unlike the night we had when we arrived on Saturday.  We had the bridge almost entirely to ourselves and the views were really amazing.  The walkway is situated above the roadway which allows you to have view in all directions unobstructed by passing cars.  While we were crossing we also noticed padlocks attached to practically every available space on the bridge where you could put a lock.  We had no idea what this was all about but when we googled it we found out that it was somewhat of a tradition started in Europe where people would place a lock on the bridge as a symbol of their love.  We did not have a lock with us but we were pretty amazed at how many locks were up there.  While we were walking we could not help but wonder why we waited our entire lives to make that walk.  We decided that this too is a must do for anyone visiting the city.

Locks of Love

We made it off of the bridge in Manhattan and walked back to our hotel which was probably ¾ of a mile or so away.  We were pretty happy to see the Welcome to Chinatown sign.  When we saw that we knew we were close to the hotel and our bed.

On Monday we had another busy day.  We started the day by visiting a couple of places near the hotel that seemed interesting.  The first was a candy store called Economy Candy that sold all kinds of candy that we grew up with plus a bunch of stuff that we had never seen before.  We ended up buying some stuff before heading to an awesome doughnut shop nearby called Doughnut Plant that sold some of most uniquely flavored doughnuts we had ever had before.  We got 6 doughnuts for breakfast to split between the two of us: a crème Brule doughnut, a green tea doughnut, a pistachio filled doughnut, a chocolate doughnut with ganache filling, and two peanut butter and jelly doughnuts.  We made one more stop before heading to the hotel to eat our healthy breakfast.  We stopped at a place called Pickle Guys.  The Pickle Guys sell all kind of pickled stuff plus pickles out of barrels in their store.  We bought some pickled okra, pickled beans and a few pickles to take with us. 

Great breakfast!

After eating we packed up and headed up town to a different hotel.  We had planned on changing hotels because when we left on Tuesday morning we didn’t want to have to deal with changing trains.  We figured a hotel closer to the subway that we ultimately wanted to be on would be better.  Rather than take two subway rides with our luggage we opted for a taxi.   The hotel was probably 60-70 blocks away and we figured the taxi ride would be about $20 but it turned out to be only about $14.  As an added bonus we got to watch TV while we drove!  On top of that it only took 15 minutes instead of the 30+ minutes the subway plus walking would have taken.  

Taxi TV

We checked into our hotel, the Lexington (on Lexington Ave) before getting ready for another walk around town plus the main reason we came to NY.  We walked past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which unfortunately was full of scaffolding.  Despite it being under construction it was still a very impressive place.  There were massive stone pillars inside which had very intricate carvings into the sides of them.  We figured that it must be quite a sight once the construction is completed.  We then walked around outside a little more, looking for a place to eat.  We passed through a small section of Manhattan called Little Brazil which was full of Brazilian restaurants but we passed up on them.  We instead settled on a gyro salad with rice from a street vendor called the Halal Guys.  We are always impressed with some of the street food in NY and we thought this was one of the best we had ever tried.  This particular place had become so popular over the years that we learned that the push cart on the opposite corner actually gave themselves the same and serves very similar food!  We sat there in the cold eating and watching customer after customer step up and get some of the yummy food.  We walked around a little bit more, stopping for pictures at a giant Love sculpture, Columbus Square and Rockefeller Center.  At one point we think we saw busses full of one of the teams that were playing the Superbowl, heading for Times Square.  We think it was one of the NFL teams because they had been rebuilding sections of Times Square for the Superbowl the day before, plus these three busses had a police escort and were heading towards Times Square.  It was too cold so we did not stick around to see if it was them or not but we were pretty sure it had to be.

Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral

Great food and always a line

One of the Superbowl teams?

Columbus Park.  This is where all distances to NYC are measured from.  So when you see the sign that says NYC 70 miles it is measuring to right here.

By the time we got back to the hotel we were pretty tired.  Jackie thought we were in for a relaxing night but Chris knew otherwise.  Chris had secretly bought tickets to see Billy Joel months before and that was one of the main reasons for taking this trip.  While he wanted it to be a surprise when Jackie started getting ready for bed he had to own up to what was going on. So rather than get into bed we headed out one more time, this time going to Madison Square Garden.  The show started a little after 9 and lasted about two hours.  We had seen Billy Joel in concert just over 20 years ago, also in Madison Square Garden.  We enjoyed this show just as much as the last.

On Tuesday morning it was time to head home.  Since we traveled to NY via train we figured we might as well fly home.  We had gotten some cheap tickets to Boston via plane but we had to trek out to JFK airport.  We took the subway to the Airtrain, a trip that was about 50 minutes total.  We arrived at the airport about an hour before our flight.  We settled in the Admiral’s Club lounge for about 35 minutes and then boarded the plane.  

Empty subway heading to JFK

The best thing about the flight home is that it was quick.  We were only in the air for 36 minutes!  That sure beats a 4 hour drive any day.  Upon arriving in Boston we took the subway back to North Station where we boarded a commuter train back to Haverhill.  The trip from our hotel in NY to our car in Haverhill was about 5 hours this time, again much more relaxing than driving. 

After this great trip into the city we decided that at least once per year we would have to make this trip.  We haven’t set a date for our next trip yet but we did agree that we had lots of fun.