Mini-Moon in New York 🏙️
I've written a lot here about my wedding journey, and the final step was our little honeymoon, or mini-moon, at the end of August. We took a two-day trip to New York, and it was absolutely lovely. I wish we could've stayed a whole week, but unfortunately that wasn't in the cards this time. We were supposed to have two-and-a-half days, but our flight there got delayed almost three hours, so we arrived much later than expected on the first day and really only had time to settle into our hotel room. Here's a little recap of the trip, with plenty of pictures!
The First Night
As I mentioned, our flight to New York was delayed. We unfortunately traveled during a heat wave, and the plane was having trouble with the extra-hot weather. We had to wait a while for maintenance to cool the plane down before we could board. It made me wonder if air travel is going to become more of an issue with climate change, but that's a topic for another time...
We arrived in the city as the sun was setting and checked into our hotel. We stayed at The Moxy at Times Square, and I can highly recommend it as we had a wonderful experience. The hotel has a playful retro-chic style, the staff were friendly and helpful, and we got free meal credits for the cafe, restaurant, and rooftop bar. We didn't actually visit the latter two, but we had breakfast at the cafe every morning.
On the first night, we were quite hungry after we arrived but also tired from the long day spent in the airport. We decided to look for a quick bite to eat near the hotel, and we found a burger place called 7th Street Burger that really hit the spot. We both got cheeseburgers, a shared order of fries, and Mexican coca-colas.
The Next Day
We woke up early the next morning to take advantage of the city and kicked things off with some coffee and pastries at the hotel cafe. We really wanted to check out the MoMA, and it was only a few blocks away from our hotel, so we walked there after breakfast. It was my first time visiting the MoMA, and I was floored by how huge it is. We didn't even see half of it before we decided to leave and have lunch, but it felt like we explored so much. My favorite bit was seeing a Georgia O'Keeffe painting in person. She's my favorite artist of all time, so it was a special moment to witness one of her paintings up close. The painting I got to see was Lake George, Coat and Red.
Another highlight was the fallout shelter and snack bar exhibit by Michael Smith. It was an entire fallout shelter that you could walk through and explore. The fact that it doubled as a snack bar was meant to "underscore the absurdity of pursuing recreation and leisure while living under the threat of annihilation." It also featured an interesting arcade game you could play, but you couldn't get very far in the game because it was meant to represent a futile and frustrating experience.
After the MoMA, we were hungry, so we visited a bucket list place of mine: McSorley's Old Ale House. I'm a huge fan of the writer Joseph Mitchell, and he wrote at length about McSorley's, which is NYC's oldest bar. I've wanted to visit it for years, and I finally got the chance to on this trip! It was everything I imagined it would be, an old watering hole full of character. We also met a lovely older Irish man there, who gave us some advice for our marriage: "never go to bed angry." We will try our best!
We explored Hudson Square for a while and then popped into Macy's. I got to sniff Dior J'Adore, which was heavenly, and we bought some candy to share. Then it was time to return to the hotel to prepare for the Incubus with Coheed and Cambria concert! The show was so good. It was so nostalgic hearing all the old songs from both bands that I used to listen to religiously in high school. Also, this is a small thing, but Brandon Boyd was wearing a Suspiria shirt (before he inevitably took it off), which I thought was really cool. 😆
After the concert, we grabbed some food from a stand next to our hotel and then headed to our room to crash for the night. In the elevator on the way up to our room, we met a couple who had also been at the concert, and they wanted us to have drinks with them at the rooftop bar, but we had an early morning ahead of us, so we politely declined.
Day Two
The next morning, we took an early train ride to the beautifully spooky town of Sleepy Hollow! I definitely want to go back someday during the Halloween season, as it was still too early to experience any of their seasonal festivities, but it was still a great time just walking around the town and taking in all of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow decor. The town was originally settled by the Dutch, and my ancestors on my mom's side were Dutch New Yorkers, so it was also nice to experience a bit of that culture and feel connected to the past.
We visited the cemetery, which was full of atmosphere and old gravestones, including Washington Irving's. Then we had pizza for lunch at Beekman Ale House, which turned out to be a fantastic choice. We got the Beekman Ave pizza and their tiramisu for dessert, along with beer and cider.
One exceptionally cool aspect of the restaurant was that they had an old CRT TV in one of their windows, flanked by a bunch of horror movies on VHS, and it was playing American Psycho when we went in. By the time we left and I took the opportunity to snap a picture of it, it was unfortunately only playing static, but I think it's still a really cool image!
The last stop of our Sleepy Hollow trip was a walk alongside the Hudson River, where we got a great view of the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse. Even though we arrived at the tail-end of a heatwave, we were lucky that it dissipated during our trip and we had beautiful weather throughout. There was a lovely breeze flowing off the river that felt amazing during our stroll.
We wanted to get back to the city before sunset, so we took the train back and visited Midtown Comics, which was on Danny's bucket list. He bought a Peach Momoko variant of an X-Men comic that was exclusive to Midtown, and then we headed to an amazing little Italian restaurant called IT Trattoria for dinner. I had a pasta dish with creamy sauce and mushrooms, and Danny had pasta in a spicy tomato-based sauce with prosciutto. It was a great way to cap off the trip.
Heading Home
The US Open tennis tournament was happening in NYC while we were there, and Danny is a big tennis fan, so we watched some highlights on TV before going to bed. The next day was mostly spent making our way home. It was back to the airport, where we had some surprisingly good pork lo mein, and then back to our normal lives. It was such a good trip, albeit short, and a perfect mini-moon. I love spending time with Danny, and our trip was the icing on top of the marriage cake this year. 💕