new york, new york

At the beginning of January, I went on a 3 day trip to New York with my friend Neelu. I was in NY once before - about 10 years ago for some orientation so we were inside a hotel most of the time - so I consider this trip my first real visit.

I fell in love with NY right away. "Wow" was definitely the word of the day every day of the trip. I also found out that Neelu is a perfect travel buddy - we are interested in a lot of the same things, we got hungry at the same time and we both liked to sleep in a bit among other things. 

We stayed right by Central Park so we walked through it every day.

One day, we spotted this tree decorated with lanterns - our guess was Chinese New Year decorations.

Neelu and I had a list of things we decided we had to try: a New York bagel, something from a street vendor and New York style pizza.

The first morning we had bagels - with cream cheese and sun dried tomatoes - delicious! We also checked off street vendors, but we never ended up getting pizza. We did however try some New York cheesecake (whipped white chocolate raspberry) at Maxies by Times Square - really good. We also split a slice of tiramisu, which unfortunately was only OK at best.

Speaking of Times Square - seeing it on TV doesn't even compare.

My photo doesn't do it justice either - it was so mesmerizing.

Since I love sweets, I dragged Neelu to Dylan's Candy Bar - the biggest candy store in the world (according to Wikipedia) owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter, Dylan Lauren.

The store was a zoo on a Saturday afternoon, but nonetheless amazing. It's actually real candy in the floor!

I was so tempted to get one of those cupcakes - I'm drooling right now as I'm looking at this picture. I did however get the "it" bar, dark chocolate with sea salt flavor. Interesting combo, but really tasty. And yes, the cool package was probably the deciding factor.

Here are some other tasty spots we checked out. 1) Balthazar in SoHo is very hip and posh. Great food, but $20+ for eggs florentine was a little much for me - worth the experience though! 2) Rice to Riches, a place that sells only rice pudding, was heavenly. We split an order of coconut coma and hazelnut chocolate bear hug - both fantastically delicious! 3) Peperoncino in Brooklyn is the cutest and coziest little Italian spot with the nicest service - we went there with our friend Elizabeth who just moved to NY from Minneapolis.

Elizabeth did some improv back in MN, so she took us to the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. The show was so funny - I definitely recommend it!

But no, we didn't just eat on our trip - we did go to the Museum of Modern Art. Here are some of my favorites.

I love Tapestry of the Thousand Longest Rivers of the World by Alighiero e Boetti due to its graphic / typographic nature.

Same for Warhol's piece.

Wonderful Matisse.

Starry Night was surprisingly small, but gorgeous nonetheless.

Seurat... I just realized that A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is at the Art Institute of Chicago - will have to go check it out!

And of course Picasso...

We also stopped by the Tim Burton exhibit - it's at MoMA through April 26th.

What's the conclusion from the trip? I love New York!

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Great post, Ola! Brought back fun memories of hanging with you and Neelu. Come back soon, lady!

[Neelu]

This is such a fantastic synopsis of our trip, Ola. It makes me really want to be back there!

[Aimee]

I am SOOO jealous! Both that you got to go to NYC and that you got to see Elizabeth. Thanks for posting such great photos from your trip!