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Thursday, 14 January 2016

travel | a weekend in New York


traversing through Williamsburg, Greenwich village, SoHo, Times Square and the Upper East Side 


This year I'm spending January in the US as part of a cohort of 48 students studying a global intensive at the University of Maryland. As part of this we got to spend a long weekend in New York (a 4-hour bus ride away from Washington DC).

For this weekend, I stayed in a studio apartment via airbnb in East Village for the first time. The building was old with creaky staircases that could only fit one person at a time but the neighbours seemed nice, the apartment was warm and comfortable and strangely, this tiny place somehow made me feel like a New Yorker. East Village is one of those neighbourhoods that seem quiet and tamed during the day, but really comes alive at night so I went to sleep every night surrounded by the noise of lively bars and karaoke-singing neighbours. No need to worry about feeling lonely in this place.  

Friday | Brooklyn, SoHo and Time Square

I had arranged to meet a couple of friends from Melbourne  in the morning but they were running late. To burn time, I walked around the block near Union Square Station and ended up spying the Empire State Building and shopping at Free People. 




decorated vintage skates inside Free People

 Once my friends arrived, we jumped on a Brooklyn-bound metro and picked a random stop (Lorimer St) and ended up in Williamsburg. There we found a Melbourne-esque cafe called re'union and dropped by for brunch. 



Realising that most of the bars in Brooklyn/Williamsburg do not open until evening, we went back into Manhattan and stopped off at Greenwich Village in search of the Central Perk cafe, made popular by the classic TV show "Friends" (which we later found out had closed a year ago). Along the way we found NYU, Washington Square, and sangria and ceviche at a small restaurant called Vin et Fleurs in SoHo.





We parted ways and I metro'd back to Time Square planning to get last-minute tickets to a Broadway show by myself. Instead I ran into some more fellow Melbournians whilst lining up at TKTS and we decided on Phantom of the Opera. As usual, the actors were undoubtedly talented, and James Barbour's rendition of the Phantom brought me to tears.



Saturday | Upper East Side 

A trip to New York is never complete without a visit to 5th Ave. I spent the majority of Saturday walking up and down 5th Ave and Madison Ave as the winter sales were simply too hard to resist. The day started at the outer edge of Central Park with breakfast at the Nespresso Cafe (greek yoghurt parfait topped with fresh fruit). Then I spent a good hour at Henri Bendel, my favourite store here in New York. There's something about this age old department store that just feels magical (sometimes I think that Henri Bendel might be my Disneyland). 

Then it was back to SoHo for lunch at Balthazar's - Anna Wintour's favourite restaurant. We didn't see her there, but the French bistro atmosphere and the pappardelle with wild boar ragout was worth the visit. From Balthazar's I went back to the Upper East Side to check out Saks Fifth Ave and their famous shoe department with its very own post code. By this point I had walked and shopped so much that I was beginning to feel faint, but somehow the sales kept me soldiering on. The night ended at Nare Sushi, a new Japanese sushi bar tucked inside a building on Park Ave serving warm sake and pickled mackerel sashimi.






Sunday | Upper East Side 

By this point I'm thinking to myself "what is wrong with me?!". Here I had planned to spend the day exploring the Metropolitan Museum of Art and instead, I ended up back on 5th Ave, this time admiring the Christmas holiday decorations adorning the buildings. Then it was off to Victoria's Secret and Bloomingdale's for more shopping. Couple of hours later, I was finally a bit shopped out, so I walked through Upper East Side all the way down to Grand Central Station, soaking in the art deco architecture and the buzz of the city along the way. 



A trivial observation - throughout my time studying here so far at the University of Maryland, our professors have emphasised the vast size of the consumer population here in the US. Walking past this store on 5th Ave was a testament to that market size. In Melbourne, a pop up store usually means a couple of stands in the middle of a shopping centre. Here in New York, a pop up store is a 2-storey building on 5th Ave.  

My weekend wrapped up at Rockefeller Plaza, soaking in the winter magic around the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree and watching people nervously skating around in the ice rink below. New York was bright, bustling and full of energy, just as I had remembered. Sometimes there is so much buzz in the city that it is almost overwhelming; but if you stop for a moment and just observe, the movement of the city is simply, indescribably, beautiful.



xoxo

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This week, the world lost a legendary musician by the name of David Bowie, and a talented beloved actor named Alan Rickman aka Professor Snape. 
With this post, I am sending a prayer to their loved ones as well as those of us saddened by the news of their passing. 
May they both rest in peace. 

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