Winter Travels - Part .5 - New York

We have been doing a lot of traveling lately! I firmly believe we need to take advantage of this time and visit all the places we can before we have kids in a few years – even on a limited budget. While trying to pack for all of my four vacations between December 10^th and January 18^th, I concluded that I was crazy for trying to do all of this and that it wouldn’t be worth it. I had even considered cancelling our short trip to New York and Connecticut because our car was having issues (minor ones and they were fixed before we left), we wanted to leave our house spit spot clean, and it was the DAY after finals ended. I feel like we’re always on the go, but we really enjoyed ourselves and I think that’s how we operate best.

Our first trip (of four) was to New York City and New Haven, Connecticut. We really love New York and we also really wanted to experience “Christmastime in the City.” It was FREEZING there but we loved it. We even got to meet up with Nate and Rachael again. We’ve only met each other and hung out three times (well Nate and I have known each other for a long time, but you get the idea) we all just gel really well together and have so much fun.  We stayed for two nights at a hotel in New Jersey again (it is so much cheaper and the bus takes you right into the city). We started our day off in the TKTS line – we got tickets for Memphis, which was a GREAT show – the first act was good and the second act was incredible (Thanks to Mom and Dad Laird for making this part of our New York trip possible – what a great Christmas gift!) Before the show, we went to Rockefeller Center and Saks, and it really helped put us in the Christmas mood. Seeing all of the Christmas decorations, the tree, and the animated snowflakes was a really fun experience. We also stopped for hot chocolate at least twice. We also had delicious burgers and fries at the Shake Shack. Memphis was great and we stopped at Cosi afterwards for soup to warm us up.

 

Saturday we slept in and ate at this fabulous little restaurant called Norma’s – it’s at a swanky hotel near 5^th Avenue, but the breakfast is TO DIE FOR. It is totally worth the ridiculous price. I ordered irresistible banana pancakes and Aaron ordered mango crepes. We spent the rest of the day with Nate, Rachael, and Sam. We went to Macy’s, saw more Christmas decorations and ended up in Greenwich Village for dinner at a place called Stand – they had really amazing shakes, toasted marshmallow was the favorite flavor. We didn’t order this because I thought it was going to taste like marshmallows, which I really don’t like, but it ended up tasting just like a s’more! SO GOOD. We wished we had ordered one. We weren’t too excited about eating burgers again, but we split chicken burgers and regular burgers between us and it still tasted pretty good (Can you tell I’m a foodie? I am sparing more detailed food descriptions). We left for Connecticut that night after a stop in Washington Square Park for some pictures.