New York, New York (part 2)

So it’s the second day of our adventure in the city, pretending to be tourists(if you’d like to see our first day you can click here). We wake up, I run to the Starbucks in the lobby and we decide to go to Madam Tussauds. At the time that we went it wasn’t crowded but I have to believe that it would be crowded during the later afternoon and we went around 11 am. That being said, we had so much fun there we spent about 2 hours just taking our time and taking pictures and having loads of fun. If you want to see my full review of that trip to Madam Tussauds just click here. After our trip to Madam Tussauds we walked to Halal Guys cart on 53rd and Broadway. This was my first time ever having halal food so I was excited and it was super yummy. We actually ate the food back in the hotel room but on the way back we stopped into this little bakery called the Buttercup Bakeshop. Now, for anyone who loves the show How I Met Your Mother, this name would resonate with you as a familiar one. That’s because it is. Buttercup Bakery is the name of a bakery that was run by one of Ted’s girlfriends. Upon seeing the name I knew I had to step in and see what it was like and the inside look very similar to what they showed the inside of the fictional bakery in the show to look like. Now I don’t know if there is a real or definite connection BUT when I was doing research for throwing my little brother a How I Met Your Mother themed 21st birthday party, this bakery was what I remember finding out existed. So naturally I had to taste the cake. The pieces were beyond huge, 2 people couldn’t finish one slice and the cake itself was super creamy and moist and wonderful. I would definitely recommend.

We were eating in our room when Housekeeping showed up and we had to leave the room for a while so we went to the lounge by the lobby and just relaxed for about 35-45 minutes and we looked up at how extremely high the entire hotel is, and we tried to guess how many rooms could possibly be in this hotel we did this for a while before I got bored and wanted to go back to the room. Housekeeping was gone and we took a little nap before trying to figure out where we wanted to go for dinner and whether Ripley’s would be before or after that.

Look at how high up this building goes!!

So we decided that we were going to go to Ripley’s and then go get dinner to go at Bubba Gump’s. We also made another stop at the Hershey store because I needed a special type of chocolate for our Valentines Day dinner and they carried it. So we went to Ripley’s and we had fun, I think Cris enjoyed it more than I did. If you would like to see our review on Ripley’s click here. After Ripley’s we went to Bubba Gump’s and order shrimp and calamari to go and went back to the room. We finished the cake slices we bought earlier and started to pack up to go home the next day. All in all our weekend of being tourists in Times Square and enjoying our time together was a complete success. We’re already dreaming of going back to The View for summer’s restaurant week, and we’re trying to figure out where our next adventure is going to take us.

New York, New York (Part 1)

February 14th officially marks our first year together! While I was content with just a nice dinner or a nice present, Cris said my gift can be a weekend getaway in a hotel I have always wanted to stay at in the city, including dinner and fun attractions throughout our weekend there. I instantly said Marriott Marquis in Times Square. I have always wanted to stay in that hotel and be right in the center of all the touristy fun. So we booked the hotel which was extremely overpriced, and decided to plan out our weekend.

February 10-12th we were going to be tourists in our own city. I couldn’t be more excited. We took the subway in since parking at the hotel costs $90.00 and the train costs $2.75. No brainer there, except when we were going back home that Sunday, we were contemplating if taking the car would have been smarter because the subways were all kinds of messed up. Anyways, we got to the hotel around 2 pm and it felt so great to be checking in to this hotel.

Our room was ready, we had a lovely king bed room on the 14th floor. I was so excited to unpack, it’s one of my favorite parts of a trip. I thought the room was spacious for 2 people, cramped for 4 which it could fit if you used the pull out bed. For us though it felt like a little apartment with a good amount of space for our stuff.

The bed itself wasn’t super comfy but the sheets were so soft and cuddly it was like I was surrounded by clouds when I was sleeping. We unpacked and I wanted to take a walk to this camera store on 9th ave and 34th street. To our dismay, the store was closed but we managed to stop at a deli and get snacks for down time and a liquor store for champagne. It would not be a weekend adventure for us without champagne! Our first night we really spent time exploring the hotel and then had our lovely dinner at The View. We took advantage of Restaurant Week and had one of the greatest meals ever. If you would like to see our review of The View you can find that here. We walked around our hotel after and found all the ballrooms for weddings and then also found this walkway with a wonderful view of Times Square. I loved looking out on the overlook, it was actually peaceful.

We changed into normal clothes and took a walk to the Hershey store and the M&M World store. We felt that M&M world was outrageously overpriced and overheated for a chocolate store where as Hershey was too small but a much better experience. It was an hour before it closed so the crowd level in both stores were slim to none. We were tired so we went to bed around 12:30 am and we knew that the next day was going to be very busy! Our first night was a complete success!