Our Week In NYC: Food, Plays, Friends & More Food

We started planning our visit to New York City more than a year ago.

Ticket sales opened up for the Harry Potter & The Cursed Child play in February 2018 and we managed to snag 6 tickets for $100 apiece. Based on how much some other theater goers paid the day we visited, that turned out to be a bargain.

We’d only planned to spend a couple of days there originally, but figured that if we were going to be in the city anyway, we might as well spend a little longer there. As a result, we decided to visit for a week.

Shae and I were joined for most of it by her mom and stepdad, as well as one of our friends for a couple of days. Here’s everything we got up to during our week in New York City.

Day 1

Shae and I took an overnight Greyhound bus from Norfolk VA up to New York, arriving at about 7:45am. We’d booked a one night stay at the Park Hyatt using a free night certificate and were able to check-in early.

I’ve written a full review of our stay at the Park Hyatt New York, so check that out for more. In the meantime, enjoy one of the best features of the room – a bath overlooking the city.

After taking a two hour nap (we hadn’t slept much on the bus), we went out to get bagels and some wine. After using the hotel’s fitness room later that afternoon, we had Thai food delivered and then went for an evening walk in Central Park which was only a couple of blocks away.

As always, Shae managed to get another animal selfie, this time with Brownie the horse who was waiting to pull a carriage that evening.

Day 2

We slept in a little, then ordered room service breakfast as my status with Hyatt meant that was free 🙂 I got Eggs Benedict with salmon…

…while Shae went for steak and eggs.

Our friend Megan arrived shortly after we’d finished breakfast as she was joining us for a couple of days to see the Harry Potter play.

Megan had never been to New York City before, so Shae went out with her to explore the city while I worked.

We took advantage of a 4pm late checkout at the Park Hyatt, then headed to the Holiday Inn Manhattan 6th Ave-Chelsea. That was our most economical hotel option in Manhattan, although it was far from being a great hotel. Check out this review that explains why Shae described it as “hostel accommodation for hotel prices”.

Shae’s mom and stepdad Steve had arrived by this point, so Steve and I hung out at the hotel while Shae, her mom and Megan went out to get a pedicure.

Afterwards, the five of us went for dinner at Melt Shop – a grilled cheese restaurant chain that has a few locations in New York.

I don’t like cheese, so I got the Nashville Hot Fried Chicken Melt minus the melty part and topped with red cabbage slaw. It was very tasty.

Shae ordered the Truffle Melt which comes with muenster, arugula, black pepper and truffle oil. Needless to say, she loved hers too.

Grilled cheese sandwiches aren’t all that Melt Shop offers – they have milkshakes too, including Nutella milkshakes.

Day 3

Seeing as Megan had never been to New York City, one of the places she wanted to visit was the flagship Macy’s store.

While the ladies were fancying themselves up, Steve and I stood in companionable silence.

After spending a little time shopping, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the play. Harry Potter & The Cursed Child comes in two parts. You can choose to see Part 1 on one day and Part 2 on another day if you like as each part lasts about 2.5 hours. We decided to see both parts on the same day though, which meant we were at the theater from about 2pm  to 10pm.

I say “about” 2pm as we were a few minutes late. We’d thought the play started at 2:30pm, but it actually started at 2pm. Thankfully we only ended up arriving a couple of minutes late and so didn’t really miss much – oops!

Steve wasn’t interested in seeing the play, so it was me, Shae, Shae’s mom and Megan, along with one of Shae’s friends she went to college with (Laura) and one of her friends (Tara).

The play was pretty good, with the best part being some of the “magic” elements they include. Things appear and disappear and you’re not always sure how it happened. They also managed to make it look like the entire stage and backdrops shook at multiple points during the play. I won’t say anymore so as to #KeepTheSecrets, but every time it happened I tried to work out how it was done and was still confused. It turns out that it might be a special effect using all kinds of lights, but it’s more fun to think that it was done using magic.

After the play Shae, mom, Megan and I headed to Times Square so that Megan could experience that too. Seeing as we were there, Megan and I grabbed a hot dog from a food cart.

While we were there we stopped in at M&Ms World because, y’know, candy.

M&Ms were testing out three new peanut flavors at the time – Thai Coconut, Mexican Jalapeño and English Toffee. I’m English so maybe I’m biased, but the toffee one was my favorite. The Mexican Jalapeño flavor was fairly spicy, but it was more like regular chili spice as there wasn’t any actual jalapeño flavor.

The Thai Coconut flavor was OK, but it was more like Thai curry coconut rather than a sweet coconut flavor, so it wasn’t as nice as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong – I love Thai curries, just not as a candy flavor.

Day 4

I was up until about 3 or 4am the previous night working on stuff, so I needed to sleep in a little the following morning. Shae, Megan, mom and Steve therefore went off for breakfast without me (which was absolutely fine). They met up with one of Megan’s cousins and her husband who run Horderly, a home organization company in NYC.

The six of them met up at Bubby’s which is known for its pancakes. They also offer a mimosa flight that normally comes with a traditional mimosa, a grapefruit lemonade mimosa, a seasonal mimosa (this season was blood orange) and a pomegranate mimosa.

Shae ordered one of those but substituted the grapefruit lemonade mimosa with an extra blood orange one.

In addition to the mimosa flight, Shae ordered a pancake flight which consisted of banana/walnut, blueberry and Nutella/mixed berry pancakes. The pancakes were so thick, she wasn’t able to finish them off and so she brought the rest back to the hotel for me to have for a very late breakfast. I can confirm that these were some of the best – if not the best – pancakes I’ve ever had. Incredibly fluffy and flavorful – definitely worth trying.

You can even get fried chicken pancakes.

Megan had to head home that afternoon, so that left just the four of us. We headed to Starbucks Reserve Roastery that afternoon as there are only a handful of them worldwide.

If you love Starbucks, you’ll love Starbucks Reserve. The place is huuuuuuuuge and you can watch the roasting process.

In addition to coffee, they sell all kinds of other Starbucks stuff you won’t find in their regular stores. That includes a gold Starbucks mermaid for “only” $4,500.

There’s even a bar area where you can get cocktails that include coffee or tea. It sounds weird, but mom enjoyed her cocktail that was like a coffee margarita.

Back in 2009/10, Shae and I lived in Thailand for about 6 months. While we were there we met Katina who we’ve remained friends with since then through Facebook.

She now lives in New York, so we met up for dinner at a tapas bar called Sala One Nine. The food was tasty, although it was pretty pricey for what it was.

We had a nice time though as it was great catching up with Katina again after almost 10 years.

That wasn’t all the eating though as we stopped off for donuts on the way home.

The walk home took us past a pet shop, so Shae popped inside to take a look as they were having an adoption event. She found a cute pup, but we didn’t come home with a brother or sister for Truffles.

Day 5

We slept in a little the next day, then headed to Chelsea Market for lunch which is on the other side of the road of Starbucks Reserve Roastery.

As you can see from the sign above, there are tons of places to eat at Chelsea Market. Katina had recommended we try Los Tacos, so we went there for lunch. I got two tacos – one carne asada and one pollo asado. They have a few different salsa options which were all good, including a very smoky, spicy one. The tacos themselves were delicious and are worth trying.

Shae also got a carne asada taco, but her second one was completely different. Los Tacos offers nopal – which is cactus – as a taco filling. In addition to flour and corn tortillas, they also have cheese tacos – yep, a wrap made of cheese.

Shae decided to combine the two and got a nopal cheese taco which she really enjoyed. It’s hard to describe what nopal is like – its consistency is like a cross between a roasted green pepper and a green bean, but it tastes a little more peppery (as in black peppery rather than green peppery). She loved both the nopal and cheese tortilla, so I think she’d get it again if we returned.

After perusing the bookshop and some other stores, our final stop in Chelsea Market was The Doughnuttery where we grabbed some dessert. They have some fun flavors like apple cider, coco mint paddy and fruit cereal. They were good, but they’re pretty expensive at $1 apiece for each mini donut (they’re maybe 2 inches long).

We’d already overspent by this point of the trip, so we got a cheaper dinner that night. I got a lamb gyro from a nearby food truck for $5…

…while Shae got a couple of $1 slices of cheese pizza from 2 Bros Pizza which was round the corner from our hotel.

Day 6

Shae has been taking a course on writing children’s stories since last year with Storyteller Academy. She’s part of a critique group with a few other people, one who lives in New Jersey and one who lives on Long Island. The three of them met up for lunch at Wagamama and then went for dessert at Insomnia Cookies.

Shae, her mom, stepdad and I headed uptown that afternoon to meet up with Shae’s cousin, husband and son for dinner. We went to Grazie which is an Italian restaurant a few blocks from where they live.

I ordered the sea bass which came with broccoli rabe and was very good. As you can probably tell from all the previous photos, it was also my healthiest meal of the week!

Shae ordered the Linguine Amalfi which came with tomato, black olive, fresh mozzarella, capers, garlic and oil. It was excellent and so it wasn’t a problem finishing it all.

It was great catching up with Jen and Ed and we’ll hopefully see them again at the end of July.

That wasn’t the end of the night though. After leaving the restaurant, the four of us headed to Dylan’s Candy Bar. They have a few locations in New York City, but we went to their flagship store on the Upper East Side as that has an actual bar.

Not only is it a candy store with a bar, but the bar serves candy-themed drinks. I got a Nerds mojito which I realized later I’d ordered the last time we went. To be honest, it wasn’t all that great – I don’t know if it’s the Nerds in the bottom or something else, but it’s not a very good mojito.

Shae ordered some kind of s’mores cocktail which she didn’t really enjoy either. I finished it off for her and liked it much more than she did.

Dylan’s Candy Bar was having a special on one of their pitcher-sized cocktails that night, so Shae’s mom ordered one of those. In addition to its regular sweetness, it came topped with tons of incredibly sour candy belts.

Mom understandably struggled to finish it on her own, so Shae gave her a hand.

Day 7

Sunday was our final day in the city. One of Shae’s friends from school now lives in New York, so we met up with him at Dough which is between Midtown and Hell’s Kitchen.

I got a toasted coconut donut, while Shae got a Nutella stuffed donut and a chocolate donut with cacao nibs.

Other than meeting up with Mark, we hadn’t planned anything for that day previously. At dinner the previous night though, Shae’s cousin asked if we wanted tickets for a show. Jen runs Foresight Events which works with several different theater productions on Broadway. She was therefore able to get us some comp tickets for King Kong – The Musical at the Broadway Theatre.

I had mixed feelings about the play. I didn’t really take to the storyline and it didn’t have any memorable songs. However, King Kong himself is incredibly impressive.

He’s a two story high, two ton animatronic creature. It’s incredibly realistic and is controlled by more than a dozen people. When King Kong first came on stage, seeing all his wires and operators was a little jarring, but that quickly faded. The show has some good effects that make it look like he’s running through the streets and climbing the Empire State Building.

One of the most impressive features was King Kong’s facial expressions. They’ve managed to make his face look like it’s acting naturally, including his eyebrows moving up and down. This makes him look much more “normal” and so helps make it easier to ignore his operators.

Something that King Kong – The Musical also does well is that they let you know before the show that you can take photos and videos during the curtain call. Not only does that prevent people from taking photos during the show, it increases the likelihood that people will share photos and video from the end of the show on social media.

Such as this video I took of King Kong during the curtain call:

Day 8

Our flight was due to leave New York at midday, so Shae and I left the hotel at about 9:15am to get to LaGuardia in plenty of time.

LaGuardia is home to one of American Express’s Centurion Lounges. You have to have an Amex Platinum card to gain access and it’s a much nicer place to hang out than the terminal.

I therefore wanted to arrive in plenty of time to enjoy the lounge as it meant we could have breakfast and mimosas before leaving the city.

It’s a short hop from New York to Norfolk VA, so our flight only took ~90 minutes or so – the end of our NYC adventure.

We aren’t really classing this as an official stop on our 50 state road trip though. Not only because we didn’t actually drive up, but we’ll be spending at least 6 weeks in New York state in the future on our road trip, so we’ll visit New York City again at that point.