Disheveled Musings: New York, New York

Sami and I had a wonderful weekend exploring New York City last weekend! It was absolutely fantastic to be able to spend three full days hanging out with my beautiful daughter in such an interesting place and cool place.

After all New York City is New York City, and it has so much to offer in terms of just being itself. Its sheer size, the cacophony of sounds, its pungent and exotic smells (I’m talking Chinatown now), the nerve tingling visual images of the Big Apple can only be seen to be believed – it’s a phenomenon unto itself.

We agreed that each year we would spend a weekend exploring New York together, just the two of us. The reality is that I'm thrilled that Sami wants to still do that with me. Seriously I'll take that any day of the week and is such a blessing. J

Our adventure began after arriving into New York around 4:00 pm we caught a cab to our hotel on West Street down in the Financial District. We like this locale because lower Manhattan is far enough away from the craziness of Midtown and Time Square where many of the hotels are situated, but still provides that truly New York City flavour.

After freshening up we wandered over toward Little Italy and ended up walking through Chinatown. Its such an eye opening experience at the best of times, but I must admit its a tad smelly on a warmish spring afternoon so Sami was not overly impressed with our detour, although I'm sure she liked seeing it, not too sure about smelling it.

Afterwards we had a wonderful meal at Il Cortile on Mulberry Street in the heart of Little Italy, before grabbing some Canoles for our dessert as we strolled slowly back to our hotel. The evening was a perfect temperature and it was such a great way to start the weekend.

Saturday saw us up early as we headed up to Tribeca for breakfast at Sarabeth’s on Greenwich Street. The portion sizes were much bigger than our tummies could handle so afterwards we had to walk through SoHo toward Broadway to digest our brekkie.

One of our favorite places to people-watch (yes, Sami is an avid people watcher as well) is Dean & Deluca’s at the Corner of Prince and Broadway. And so by the time we made our way over there I was ready for a pastry and latte… C’mon it took us a while to stroll over so I wasn't feeling bad about eating again so soon after the huge breakfast at Sarabeth’s. J It’s always packed with locals doing their weekly shop as well as the out-of-towners like us who are content to have a coffee and watch the world go by at their leisure, it just feels homey.

With a latte in hand we wandered up Broadway to the NYUBookstore, where Sami and I checked out some NYU gear, she quickly found some running shorts and a t-shirt that had NYU Law emblazoned on them. She excitedly announced that her dream was to go to Law School in New York City (either Columbia or NYU – it didn't matter) and that perhaps one day she'd have her own law practice right here in Manhattan. What a wonderful dream to have!

Afterwards we continued up to Union Square before arriving at the Flatiron building on the corner of 5^th Avenue and Broadway around lunchtime. We then realized that we had a show to catch so quickly caught the subway back to our hotel before cabbing it to the Broadhurst Theatre on 44^th street for our Broadway matinee.

Sami had chosen Mamma Mia this year and selected some great seats (Orchestra, 5^th row center), it was a perfect location, close enough to get the full effect but not close enough to get the sweat flung on us from the performers. That girl has great instincts, and not sure we could have gotten better seats. Plus Abba never goes out of style!

As a special treat Sami had asked if we could go back to the Tribeca Grill for dinner just like we did on our last visit in 2012. So after our matinee and a rest back at the hotel we went for dinner. No surprise that both the food and ambience was fabulous and the conversation thick and fast.

I waddled back to the hotel completely full, although I've now realized that Sami has the ability to consume Hagen Daz ice cream even after our enormous meal…seriously I'm not sure where she puts all that food, but got to love her enthusiasm for dessert!

Sunday morning I took Sami to the Balthazar Bakery on Spring Street, which is quite close to Dean & Deluca’s for breakfast. She loved the vibe and the amazing scrambled eggs with croissants…so delicious!

Afterwards we made our way up Broadway to 5^th Avenue and from there we power shopped (It's official...I've now been into every Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, Brandy Melville and American Apparel in Manhattan) all the way up to Central Park.

Eventually we found ourselves at Bloomingdale’s over on 60^th street (Sami was looking for some Van's) before calling it quits and having lunch at a local cafe. By this time we were both shopped out and so with only one more official stop to be made (Dylan’s Candy store as she wanted to get lollipops for all her classmates at school) he took our time and eventually wove our way back to the Central Park Zoo.

Sami has a deep affection for animals and so enjoys every chance she has of being close to them, even though in her heart she’s sad that they are in captivity it was fun afternoon. Borrowing my camera she became our official photographer for the afternoon, as my Canon will attest to the 150+ photos from the Central Park Zoo alone.

All in all it was a wonderfully rich weekend and another treasured adventure in our collective memories!

Thank you sweetheart.

Some photos from our adventure: