In 2019, I took an extra two days off from work and visited a few friends from college in New York for Labor Day weekend. I hadn’t been to Manhattan since middle school, which was before I was into photography, so I wanted to do everything again! Five days definitely wasn’t enough, but I had a blast! Thank you to Nikki, Jessie, Milan, and Kat for hosting me! A Google map of all the locations is at the end of this post.
DAY 1
I took a 9pm flight from LAX to JFK after work on a Tuesday, so I got to New York at around 6am on Wednesday. It was my first time taking a red-eye flight, and I definitely recommend doing it so you don’t lose a day traveling!
Before booking my flight, I didn’t realize how far JFK airport was from the city. An Uber to my friends’ apartment in Hell’s Kitchen was going to cost $60! I decided to do some research and learned how to take public transportation by following this article, taking the AirTrain for $5, then got a 7-day subway pass for $33.
In total, it took about an hour and a half to get from JFK to Hell’s Kitchen. I exited the subway a little after 7am, so I just went to a Starbucks to wait until my friends woke up, which ended up only being like 20 mins later.
Nikki and I took the subway to Ess-A-Bagel, which was recommended to me by my roommate. Bagels in New York are like donuts in Los Angeles. There are little bagel stores everywhere! There are an overwhelming amount of cream cheese options, and they scoop it onto your bagel like it’s ice cream! I got an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox, which cost like $14!! I was a bit shook by the price, but when in New York, am I right? Then, we went back to her apartment and she worked from home while I took a fat three-hour nap.
I woke up around noon, and then Jessie and I did some sightseeing. I love the architecture of churches, so of course when I saw the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, I had to peek inside. Then, we got chocolate chip cookies from Levain Bakery which were absolutely worth the hype! We quickly met up with my friend Katie who happened to be in New York for 24 hours to interview for a job, then bought books at Strand Bookstore. It was sprinkling outside, but we still walked to the Oculus World Trade Center, Brookfield Place, Eataly, the Fearless Girl Statue, and Wall Street.
For dinner, we met up with Nikki and another friend from Chapman, in the lower East side at Dudley’s. It was a very small, cute Australian restaurant. I got the crab linguine, and it was pretty good, but I think the brunch menu looked better. For dessert, we went to Milk Bar for their Milk Bar pie soft serve.
DAY 2
I left the apartment early and stopped at Pick A Bagel (got a bagel with chive cream cheese for a much more reasonable price) before heading to Grand Central Terminal to take the train to New Canaan and visit my friend Kat at her family’s house in Pound Ridge. I didn’t realize New Canaan was in Connecticut, so I can say I went to another state. Kat picked me up at the train station and we drove into the town of New Canaan, stopped at Dunkin Donuts, then ordered a lobster roll to-go from Rosie Café. We went to visit her dad at his work. He was a teacher at Rye Country Day School, which is where Kat went to high school for a few years.
I think the lobster roll wrecked my stomach, so I hung out at her house while she took her brother to football practice. Later, she drove me around her town and showed me her public high school, and we picked up her brother.
We went bougie for dinner and Kat took me to one of her favorite places in her town, The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean Georges. It had a warm, modern cabin vibe and we shhttps://www.theinnatpoundridge.com/ared the sushi and a pizza. When we got back to her house, we took her dog for a walk, then ate her dad’s bread pudding for dessert. Kat’s talked about it for years and it lived up to the expectations.
DAY 3
We picked up two breakfast sandwiches at Cameron’s Deli to eat while waiting for the train to take us back to Grand Central. We walked through Central Park, near the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, on our way to the Guggenheim, which we got free passes for, courtesy of Kat’s mom’s library membership.
Next, we got lost trying to find the Vessel and then embraced the air conditioning in the Hudson Yards shopping mall where we got ice cream at Kith. Later, we met up with Nikki, Jessie, and Milan at Gitano Jungle Room for drinks because we are classy, then walked to Rice to Riches for rice pudding. I think it was my first time trying rice pudding. It was definitely not photogenic and the portion size was huge, but it was pretty good.
Kat went back to her house, and Nikki and I went to Dumbo in Brooklyn to shoot at golden hour. I had seen pictures of Dumbo for years because one of my favorite photographers, Brandon Woelfel, is from New York and posts pictures from Jane’s Carousel and Empire Fulton Ferry Park there all the time. With the water views, Dumbo felt more like Seattle and it was actually breathtaking. For a second I thought I could move to New York (but I can’t, the city is too dirty and expensive for me). Cecconi’s was right on the water, so we checked if they had any open tables. They didn’t have anything outside, so we sat on the inside patio. We started with calamari and then we had pasta and it was just as good as I had hoped (but a tad pricey). There’s a location in Los Angeles as well, and I’m waiting to go with my parents hehe.
DAY 4
Nikki agreed to get up at sunrise to take photos in Times Square so there wouldn’t be too many people getting in the way. I remember how crazy it was when I had visited with my parents. It’s a different experience when you’re not surrounded by crowds of people. You don’t feel the energy, it just feels like…dare I say, a concrete jungle?? We came back home to nap, then went back out and stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.
I didn’t plan on seeing a Broadway show because I saw Lion King on my first trip to New York. I also was trying to ball on a budget and didn’t want to spend money on a ticket. However, that’s before I heard about rush tickets.
Nikki and Jessie had been seeing a ton of Broadway shows that summer and I never knew how they afforded it. If you go to the box office the day of a show, right when the box office opens, you can get discounted tickets for a show for that day if they have any unsold seats. For the more popular shows shows, you need to get to the box office hours before it opens, others will have shorter line. Jessie said she waited for hours for rush tickets to Hadestown.
I didn’t want to wait in line for very long, so we opted for a smaller show, Waitress. The box office opened at 10am, and Nikki and I got there around 9:20am. There were probably 20 people in line ahead of us, but since there were two shows on Saturday, we ended up getting left box seats for the matinee show at 2pm.
We had some time to kill before the show, so we took the subway to the High Line observation deck, and walked around Chelsea Market. I wish I could’ve gone back to eat somewhere in there, but we had our sights set on artichoke pizza from Artichoke Basille’s Pizza across the street. It was pretty empty in the restaurant, but if you sat at a table, you had to get 3 slices minimum, so we ended up sitting at the bar. The pizza was rich and creamy and the slices were massive, like from Costco. It would definitely be a good place to go with a bigger group.
We went back to the apartment so I could change clothes to go to the show. I had never heard of Waitress before, but the music was all written by Sara Bareilles. I really enjoyed the show. The acting and singing were amazing and I’d highly recommend going to see it!
For dinner, we went to Momofuku Nishi with Jessie and Milan, and I got some cacio e pepe pasta. I definitely ate more bread and pasta in these five days in New York than I had in a month in LA. Then, we walked to do some shopping at Flying Tiger, Barnes and Noble, and Baskin Robbins. We went to an AMC see Brittany Runs a Marathon, which was set in New York, and I recognized some places from my trip so far!
DAY 5
We woke up late on Sunday morning and got ourselves to Brooklyn for lunch at 12 Chairs Café. It was pretty crowded with the brunch rush, but we just took photos while we waited. The food was pretty good and I finally consumed some vegetables. Then, we headed to Domino Park and saw Taylor Swift murals on the way #Lover.
We were on our way back to the subway when we saw Tom Fruin’s stained glass greenhouse at North Brooklyn Farms that we saw in the movie the night before. It was so cool! I haven’t seen a lot of photos of it on Instagram, but it’s definitely a great spot! I made everyone stop for some colorful portraits.
I really wanted to take photos on the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was a long walk to get to the entrance of the bridge and it was SO CROWDED, it wasn’t even worth it. It would probably be a good place for a sunrise shoot. We walked halfway, I snapped a pic, then we walked over to this little area by the water called the Seaport District.
My friends showed me one last spot on our way back to Hell’s Kitchen. We walked through the Turnstyle Underground Market at the 59th St Columbus Circle Station. It was a lot bigger than I expected and reminded me of the massive underground metro stations in Budapest. I wish I could’ve eaten something there, but I was way too stuffed. When we got back to the apartment, I packed all my stuff up and headed back to the airport.
I had originally wanted to stay until Monday, but flights were way cheaper the day before. But in the end, I was so exhausted after walking everywhere and waking up early, I’m glad I left on Sunday so I had Monday to recover.
I definitely didn’t do everything that I wanted to do, but I know I’ll be back again! I still want to go to the Met, see the carousel at Central Park, get dessert at Serendipity, go up the Empire State Building, shoot at the sunflower fields, see fall colors, and take a trip to Coney Island. It’s kind of crazy to think that I’m able to travel more now that I have a full-time job than when I was in college!
RECOMMENDATIONS:
-definitely take public transportation from JFK to the city if you’re traveling alone, you save so much money! If you have 4 people and want to split an Uber, that might be worth it, but $60 is definitely a waste of money, especially when you’ll probably have to buy a metro card too
-get rush tickets for a Broadway show
-make a reservation for a seat outside at Cecconi’s and go to Dumbo for sunset
-if you want to go on the Brooklyn Bridge, definitely go earlier in the morning and maybe on a weekday
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