The City That Never Sleeps

If you were thinking Las Vegas, you’re wrong.  I’m referring to New York, but Las Vegas never sleeps either.  People are up until the wee hours of the morning and stores are open until midnight.   New York City is one of my favorite cities to visit.  I don’t think I could live there, but I enjoy visiting.  It’s full of fast paced energy, beautiful window displays, museums, historical buildings, diverse people and delicious food.   Somehow it always boils down to the food.  A week ago I was in the city experiencing all of its sights, sounds and delicacies.

I’ve visited NYC several times  and each time I like to try something different. Click on NYC  to read about my past adventures.  This trip my husband and I went on a Greenwich Village Food Tour.  There was a group of about 16 of us who walked the streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood with our guide Heather.  She was very friendly and gave us a little history of the neighborhood and the local delicacies. We also sampled several items from the local restaurants.  The photos above were taken with my IPhone of Greenwich Village.   Do you recognize the top building?  It’s the building Monica lived in from the TV show Friends.   The bottom photo is of several resident’s courtyard.  You would never guess something like this exists behind the neighborhood buildings.

As you can see from the above photos we went to quite a few places.  The tour is about three hours long.  Some highlights of the tour were:

• a slice of pizza from Joe’s Pizza
• one of the best meatballs I’ve ever had from Pesce Pasta
• cheese samples from Murray’s cheese shop
• a fresh slice of baguette bread from Amy’s Bread drizzled with olive oil from O & CO.
• rice balls from Faicco’s Italian Specialty Shop
• a fresh out of the oven chocolate chip oatmeal cookie from Milk and Cookies
• cannoli from Roccco’s
• eggplant rollatini from Rafele

Needless to say, we didn’t walk away hungry after this tour.

I was super excited to find this Little Free Library in Greenwich Village.  It was all decorated for Halloween. Click on Little Free Libraries to read about them.

Buddy Valastro’s Cake Boss Cafe was located just down the street from our hotel.  My daughter is a huge fan of the show.  We brought back some Italian cookies for her  and my son.  I ordered the Lobster Claw which is a flaky pastry filled with fresh creamy deliciousness.  I’m glad there was no calorie count listed for it. It’s one of those things you are better off not knowing.

My husband and I decided to see a few Broadway shows.  We usually purchase tickets in advance, but this time we didn’t have our heart set on anything in particular.  We decided to brave the TKTS ticket counter in Times Square.  If you aren’t familiar with TKTS, you should definitely check it out if you’re ever in the city and open to seeing any show.  Tickets go on sale the day of the show at 3 pm for evening performances. We got in line about 2:30 and almost fainted at the number of people in line.  However, the line moves very quickly and there’s staff available for questions and recommendations while your waiting.  We purchased tickets to Jersey Boys 40% off.   They were in the Mezzanine level, but most of the theaters are so small so there really isn’t a bad seat.  We decided to go back again the next day after our food tour and got in line about 4:30.  Once again a huge line, but it moved quickly and we scored tickets to Spider Man for 40% off.  This time they were orchestra seats in the middle section and on the end.  I couldn’t have picked better seats myself.   Both shows were good, but very different.   Jersey Boys is about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.  The music is great and gives you the background story behind Frankie and The Four Seasons.  My parents listened to their music all the time.  There’s even a song about me.  Can you guess what it is?  Spider Man would not have been on my list, but some ladies we talked to at Jersey Boys said they really enjoyed it.  The sets and all of the aerial flying Spider Man does make it a really fun show to see.  I also really enjoyed the Green Goblin’s performance.

This was a lot to cover in one post.  There’s one more special thing I was able to do while visiting NYC, but I’ll wait and share that with you on Monday.

I hope you enjoy your weekend!