Dear New York, I miss you already.

We’ve only been back for a week, but if I could hop on a plane and go to NYC today, I’d do it in a heartbeat. We had the best trip, y’all. We didn’t do a lot of tourist stuff- I didn’t lay eyes on the 9/11 site, the Brooklyn Bridge {one of my favorite things in NYC} or the Statue of Liberty. But boy, did we shop. And eat. And relax. I feel like we “lived” the city and I fell even more in love than I already was. I’ll try to keep the recap short, but I have a lot to tell!

We arrived on Monday night just in time for The Killers concert. If you know us, you know we are HUGE fans. The concert was not on our plan until the week before we left, when they announced they were doing a concert at a small venue in NYC. We had to change our flights and say lots of prayers that we’d even be able to get tickets. Thank goodness for the fast typing of the AMEX guy, because he is who got us the tickets that sold out in less than 15 seconds. Seriously. It was meant to be!

The concert was at Webster Hall, a really cool venue that had lots of rooms for different concerts. We got in line and waited for the doors to open at 8. There were no actual tickets- your name was just on “the list”. It was all just such a different experience than any concert we’ve attended. There were roughly 1,200 people there, and we were just a few feet away from the stage. They sang all of their great older songs, plus four new songs on their new album coming out in the fall. Everyone there was a major Killers fan like us, so everyone was singing every word to every song, and everyone was SO excited. We had such a great night and that started off our NYC trip with a bang!

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton Central Park {for free, with our Marriott Points that we’d saved for three years!}. It was beautiful and the perfect location. The first picture was the view from our room. The hotel was next to The Plaza Hotel, which is one of my favorite buildings in New York {growing up watching Home Alone 2 with my sisters, we all have a love for The Plaza!}. On Tuesday we started our morning walking to Viand’s, a fun little coffee shop on the Upper East Side. We walked through Central Park, making our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We loved the MET. We’d been there before and we say we’ll go every time we’re in NYC. It is just so unbelievable to see paintings by Picasso and Rembrandt and O’Keeffe and Chagall. I loved, loved our morning there. Then we walked through Central Park some more and had a late lunch at Shake Shack. {Background- we first heard of Shake Shack in a movie, then T went to one for the first time in DC. He came home saying it was the best burger/shake/fries combo ever, and last December I got to try it out. I totally agree with him, so we were so excited to make plans to go to Shake Shack not once, but twice on our trip to NYC! It really is the best.} After Shake Shack we spent the afternoon shopping on the Upper East Side.

That night we headed to Chinatown for some tasty hand-pulled noodles at a place called Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles. Ha! Oh my word, so good. It was a total hole-in-the-wall and we had been warned not to let them sit you in the basement, but the yumminess of the food {and homemade chili sauce} outweighed the sketchiness for sure. I would love to find a place like that in Dallas. Wednesday morning we got up and ran around Central Park. I needed to run 7.5 miles sometime that week to stay on my marathon training schedule, so we took full advantage of the 67 degree weather and the beautiful atmosphere. This was another highlight of the trip for me. It didn’t feel like 7.5 miles because we were running in Central Park for goodness sakes! After our run we headed out for day two of shopping. We went down Fifth Avenue and to Rockefeller Center and shopped. All. Day. Well, we stopped for lunch at The Burger Joint, a little dive inside the Parker Meridien Hotel that was just so good. We spent the majority of our afternoon at UNIQLO, a new-to-us store that is a lot like H&M but more organized and less chaotic. We were there for two hours, folks! I found some great deals on clothes for the fall and walked out with eight cute things for $150. Seriously, that’s a good deal! We’re hoping their clothes hold up better than H&M, but we will see.  After a full day of shopping we headed to dinner at Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain. Perfect atmosphere and amazing food made for another great date night in NYC!

Are you hungry yet??? Yes, we ate our way through the city! On Thursday morning we headed down to SoHo and had breakfast at Clinton Street Baking Company. That’s my sausage biscuit with homemade tomato jam. YUM. Then we shopped all morning in SoHo, and I found the deal of the trip. I’d been looking for white jeans all week, hoping to get them on sale since it’s late in the season. I found some marked down at the Anthropologie on 5th but they didn’t have my size. Well, they did have them at the one in SoHo and they were marked down even more- they were $168 and I got them for $60. Yes!  After shopping we ate at The Meatball Shop for a late lunch. Oh, it was another amazing meal! And see below- we had homemade cookie sandwiches for dessert. Mine was Snickerdoodle with Brown Sugar ice cream.

Thursday night we headed to Times Square for the first time of this trip. We saw Wicked and it was just perfect. I loved it and must say that if you’re ever in NYC, you have to go see it. I loved the music, the stage, all of it!

Friday morning was our anniversary. After snapping a picture in front of Tiffany’s, we grabbed a muffin from a local bakery and went to Bryant Park. It’s another one of my favorite spots and we just sat and enjoyed the beautiful view of the Empire State Building! Then we walked to Rockefeller Center and watched Kathy Lee and Hoda from the Today Show… it was so fun seeing them since I watch it every day. We spent the rest of the morning in the Flatiron District, shopping and sight-seeing. Then we ate lunch at…. Shake Shack!! This location was the one in the movie Something Borrowed. It was so good, again.

 We were starting to get worn out, so we decided to go back to the hotel, grab our books, and walk to Central Park. We sat on a bench in the Literary Walk and read and talked. A guy playing the sax sat down across from us, and it was just perfect. He ended up playing the song we danced to on our wedding day, which made the moment even more special! We had plans that night for dinner at Gramercy Tavern. It was such a special night. Our dinner took over 3 hours- we just enjoyed every bit of it. The food was incredible and we just talked and reflected over our last 10 years!

The next morning, before our flight home, we met some friends for breakfast! Bret and Lisa had arrived for their getaway in NYC the day before and it was so fun having breakfast with them. Then it was time to pack up and head home. We were ready to see the kids but we were sad our fun trip was over! I can’t wait to go back!