New York City trip report

We had a quick weekend trip to NYC over Labor Day.  We managed to score a decent room rate and figured it would be a nice little trip for the long weekend.  We mostly stuck to touristy things but here's a summary of how our trip went.

Getting to New York - It's a pretty quick drive from Maryland.  So we decided to leave Saturday morning instead of Friday night as that would involve paying for an extra night at the hotel. I also hate paying for parking in the city, paying the large toll to cross the bridge or tunnel into the city, and dealing with the traffic.  So we usually just drive up to one of the train stations in New Jersey, park our car there for a more moderate fee, and take the train into the city.

View from our hotel room from a previous visit

Broadway musicals - We had gotten tickets to Wicked from my parents as a joint birthday gift.  So we decided to make it a full Broadway weekend.  We saw Wicked as a Saturday matinee, Spongebob the Musical on Saturday evening, and The Lion King on Sunday evening.

Central Park - I love Central Park.  I usually go there for a run but Mike wanted to accompany me this time so we had a nice walk through the park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We really enjoyed the walk and the museum.  We saw their Heavenly Bodies exhibit of fashion inspired by the Catholic Church and it was really a well done exhibit.  We also met one of the cutest puppies I've ever seen while we were at the park!

Food - We didn't plan too much as far as dining reservations this time and instead decided to see where we ended up when we were hungry.  It worked out pretty well for the most part.  We had lunch at Lillie's Victorian Establishment on Saturday.  It's an $18 brunch that includes one cocktail, not a bad price at all.  And then we just had dinner at a random Italian place we saw on the street.  The food was decent but it ended up being a bit pricier that planned.  We ended the night at the bar at our hotel, they had a wonderful outdoor patio overlooking Times Square and it was the perfect way to end the evening.

Sunday we had breakfast at the hotel since that was easy and then we had lunch at Toloache, our one reservation of the weekend.  It was really good and I would definitely recommend it for Mexican food in the city.  Dinner was a late meal after we got out of the Lion King and we ended up at Virgil's Real Barbecue as it was not far from the theater.  Again, the food was pretty good and I was happy that they had several veggie options to choose from.

And that was it for our trip!  The weekend flew by.  Sunday morning we had breakfast at one of the food booths in Times Square and did some shopping and then caught the train back to Jersey.  We also met up with my cousins for lunch and got to catch up with them before heading back home.