girls trip....

This past weekend, I went on a girls trip to NYC with my sweet friends Dawn, Anne, and Ashley. I've been so excited about this trip because, well it's no secret NYC is my favorite city! I have to say, this trip was different because it was the first trip to NYC that I've ever been sick! I don't know if it was sinuses or a cold, but I looked like rudolf the whole trip and sneezed and blew my nose more times than I could count. Regardless of being sick, we had a blast! 

Friday, we started our trip with lunch at John's Pizza[my favorite pizza in NYC]. We did a little shopping on 5th ave and had our make up done at Henri Bendel's. We went back and got ready for dinner and ate dinner at Fig and Olive at 9pm and ended the night at the rooftop of the Empire Hotel. It was such a gorgeous view. We stayed out late Friday night, so we slept in saturday morning which was SO NICE!

Saturday, we shopped and ate! We had brunch at Bubby's, shopped in Soho and the east village. We went on a cupcake tour that was a total bust, so we skipped out after the 3rd bakery and instead bought gelato and crepes:) If we weren't full enough from all the food we'd had that day, we finished the night off with dinner at Dos Caminos! 

Sunday, we walked the high line, walked through Chelsea Market, shopped a little in Time Square and ended our trip where we started, with lunch at John's Pizza:)

It was a great trip! We shopped and ATE the whole time:)

 we got photo-bombed by minnie mouse;/

 This was the size of our cupcakes...

our trip to NYC...

Our trip to NYC was my favorite trip yet. I absolutely LOVE the city. I know it’s not for everyone, but for me, it’s my favorite place. I dreamed of going to New York growing up, and I had the chance to go for the first time in 2005 on a college mission trip. I fell in love and literally cried when I had to leave. I’ve somehow managed to go back at least once, sometimes twice, every year since 2005. Kaz has already said I have to take off next year:( I may be able to find a loophole in that:)

We had a great time, and so relaxing. I put a lot of thought and time in this trip because I’ve always wanted to go at Christmas. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the amount of lights that we saw. There were a lot in certain places, but in some places it didn’t even look like Christmas. My favorite place in the city, is looking at the Plaza Hotel and Central Park. It’s absolutely beautiful to me. Kaz and I love Central Park, so I decided to look for hotels around Central Park, and I don’t think I could have found a better hotel location for us. Our hotel was right beside the Plaza and our view from our hotel room was the Plaza and the front of Central Park. It was stunning. We stayed at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel. We WILL stay there again. 

We landed Friday morning and after checking in, went to eat breakfast at Sarabeth’s[right next door]. I made reservations because I had heard so many great things about it, and let me just say, it was DELICIOUS! We liked it so much we went back another morning. After breakfast, we walked along 5th avenue, by Rockefeller Center, and in Central Park. We watched the sea lions at the Central Park zoo[one of my favorite things to do] and sat in the park for awhile with a hot chocolate. We went to FAO and found WAY TOO many things we wanted to get Annie Rice, so we decided to just leave with some candy instead, and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We ate dinner at STK. We always do 1 night of a really nice dinner. This was our night. Our bill was close to $150 but we did enjoy ourselves and all the delicious food! 

Day 2: Saturday

We walked A LOT this day. We went through all the Christmas markets at Bryant Park and walked down to the high-line and ended in the meatpacking district. I had heard a lot of great things about a mexican restaurant in meatpacking called Tortilla Flats, so we ate lunch there. It was good, but not great. I wasn’t impressed but the atmosphere was great. We walked through lots of shops around Soho, Greenwich village, etc. When I travel, I always look at On Vacation Location, and found out Zach Efron was filming a movie around where we were. It wouldn’t be a NYC trip without me celebrity gawking a little right? So we sat for about an hour around where he was filming and then after about freezing to death, decided to keep walking. He was inside a building, so we never saw him. We had dinner that night at Da Andrea with Kaz’s uncle and family and had a great time catching up and spending time with family. The spaghetti was SO GOOD!

Day 3: Sunday

This was my FAVORITE day there. It was so relaxing. We slept in late, and had brunch at Serendipity. For dessert, we had one of there famous frozen hot chocolates. I have decided, I MUST got to Serendipity on every trip from here on out to NYC. The decor and atmosphere is so fun. 

After brunch, we took a LONG nap! We got up and got ready to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. It was a WONDERFUL show! We ended with pizza at John’s Pizzeria. OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE PIZZA place EVER. I’ve gone there[usually more than once] on every trip to NYC except 1. 

Day 4: Monday

We had breakfast at my favorite breakfast nook near Time Square, db Bistro Moderne. There french toast is amazing:) After breakfast, we did a little more celebrity gawking of Blue Bloods. Again, there were filming inside, but it’s still fun to look! We went in Macy’s and Bloomingdales, and then relaxed a little more at the hotel before going BACK to Johns’ pizza:) Monday was a very COLD and rainy day. We picked up dessert on our way home, and ended the night with a movie:)

Day 5: Tuesday

We had half the day before it was time to leave the city. We went back to Sarabeth’s for breakfast. Again, SO GOOD! We grabbed our hot chocolate and spent the remainder of our time in Central Park. 

We had such a fun, fun time. I loved seeing all the lights, and walking through the city. We also ate really really good!  It was a much needed trip for Kaz and I, and I don’t know how it could have been any better.  New York is a magical place to me, and I hope the Lord continues to allow me to make more trips in the future. 

exhausted...

AND THE BEST PART OF OUR TRIP, coming home to see our girls! Maggie Ruth rolled over for the first time while we were gone:( And we told Annie Rice, we had a surprise for her and she kept thinking it was a candy cane or chicken and fries:) Sweet girl. We gave her a marshmallow sucker! She LOVED it! 

hopefully I'll see you soon NYC...

Well, this is a nice sight to see! HOPEFULLY, Lord willing, if nothing goes wrong, Kaz and I will be in NYC tomorrow for a few days to celebrate me turning 30 and enjoy some much needed time together! I'll be back next week:)

girls trip to NYC...

NOTE: All of these pictures were taken with our phones, so the quality is not the best:) Our excuse for not using a real camera was we couldn't "instagram" the pictures right away! HaHa

Our trip to NYC was fabulous! It’s no secret NYC is my favorite place to go. Somehow I’ve managed to go at least once a year for the last 8 years:) It never gets old to me...I think I could go every month for the rest of my life and never see everything in the city. It’s such a wonderful place! 

This girls trip was a pretty quickly planned trip:)Every year we go on a labor day trip with friends from college. This year, on a Friday a text was sent suggesting a girls trip/guys trip. I wrote my friend Dawn and said what if we did NYC. Literally, we had the trip booked within 3 days after that text went out:) 

We really had such a good time! It was amazing we actually made it to the city when we did. Supposedly NYC was having really bad storms and they had canceled pretty much every flight going out of the city the day of our flight and night before we left for NYC. We were one of the last flights to make it in:) 

When we arrived, we checked in at the Waldorf Astoria and made our way to SoHo to eat at Lombardi’s for pizza:) It started pouring as we were eating, but we were determined it would not ruin our fun. We then shopped in SoHo for a couple of hours. If you’ve read my blog enough, you know that I love TV and I love seeing celebrities. As we were walking down one of the streets, I spotted filming equipment trucks. I told the girls that something was going on, so while they were in a shop I decided to be a little nosy and walk around the block. Sure enough, they were filming Blue Bloods[only one of mine and Kaz’s favorite shows:)]. So I stayed around to watch while the girls shopped in nearby shops. I never saw a main character and later found out none of the big characters were in that scene, so I was disappointed I didn’t see anyone because I would have LOVED to see Tom Sellek, BUT I loved watching and being apart of the action:)

That night, we had dinner at Balthazar and then grabbed A LOT of dessert after at Little Cupcake ...$36 worth of cupcakes and cake:) We headed back to the hotel for an early night, ate our hearts out, and watched a girly movie:)

Our first purchase was these glitter pens that smelled like fruit:) How old are we? I've already been using mine:)

Blue bloods filming...

our view from our room...

Saturday morning, we went for a long walk in Central Park, had brunch at Bubby’s, and walked around 5th ave and the fashion district. We went into Henri Bendel’s and all got our makeup done...Let me start by saying, every time I’ve had my make up done, it NEVER looks good. EVER! BUT I felt very confident in the guy doing my makeup, because he did all the other’s girls first, and they all looked SO GOOD! I could have cried when I saw myself in the mirror. I looked like I stuck my head in a chimney. My eyes were as dark as soot! I think I’m giving up on someone else doing my makeup...I wore my sunglasses until I got back to the hotel and couldn’t get the eye makeup off fast enough. 

For dinner, we went to STK. It was FABULOUS! I will take Kaz back there for dinner on our next trip there. After dinner, we hung out on the rooftop of the Roosevelt Hotel and walked around in Time Square a bit. That was my favorite night...Lots of laughs;)

see how black my eyes are....

Sunday morning...Well, Sunday was a bit hectic of a day. As we were leaving the hotel, there was something very interesting going on outside of our hotel. We honestly thought a politician was in our hotel, so we decided to stand in the crowd gathered outside to watch. We then proceeded to follow the parade of cops down the street to see what was going on, later to realize NYC was having a “Dominican parade” later that day. The things we will do to see someone famous:) We went to Macy’s, lunch at one of my favorites Rosa Mexicano[there guacamole is AMAZING] and Bloomingdales before heading back to meet our driver at the hotel. He called to tell us he would be there at 2pm. We had about 10 minutes to get back to the hotel..We went the wrong way on the subway, got in a cab to sit still for 5 minutes only to pay $5, and realized the Dominican parade was going on, and we COULD NOT get around it. We were frantic, because we were already cutting it close with our flight. After running around like crazy women, we finally found a way around and made it back to our hotel at 2:25. Dawn is 6 months pregnant, and I really thought she might go into an early labor the way we were running around. We got to the airport at 2:45, through security at 3:15 and made our way to the gate where our flight should have been already boarding...it was delayed over an hour! That was just our luck after the craziness we had, BUT even through things were hectic, we had a great last day in the city! 

It seemed like we were there for longer than 3 days which was a good thing, because looking back it went by so fast! We decided a girls trip is in order every year:)