new york, new york

Watch me attempt to back track through life. I swear I wanted to post these right after they happened, but...#life.

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In October 2014, I got a chance to travel to New York for a work event. I know that there are some people that hate traveling for work, but I still kind of enjoy it and that's probably because I haven't done very much of it. I was just excited to visit one of my favorite cities in the world!

This trip was the first time I used Uber. I had a coworker teach me how to use it a couple of days before I left and just prayed for the best. Thank goodness for patient coworkers who take pity on me not knowing anything cool ever.

Uber ended up being a pretty good experience. The drivers were all (for the most part) friendly. Some of them were chatty and would ask me where I was from. I had one driver that actually knew where Utah was (he was probably the nicest of all the drivers) - the rest of them all assumed that Utah was somewhere next to Texas and one guy said something about potatoes. So... basically Idaho and adjacent to Texas. Sure.

The last Uber driver I had teased me about my customer rating. Every time you take an Uber, they ask you to rate your driver at the end of the ride based on service, promptness, car cleanliness etc. etc. I had NO idea until the last day there that the drivers were rating me as a passenger! Apparently for the 2 days I used Uber in New York, I went from a perfect 5 to a 4.1. The last driver I had said "If you were a driver, no one would want a ride from you! 4.1 is too low!" Whatever. I'm an awesome passenger.

Picture time! I'm going to go chronologically because I think it's more fun that way.

This is the front of my hotel - The Ace. There was construction up and down this street. I was bummed about the scaffolding everywhere because this was a cool old building, but you couldn't really see much of it so I just settled for a picture of the cool marquee out front.

This is  the reception desk.  That sign made me laugh and their uniforms were SO hipster. Like knee socks and wool shorts. See the cool flooring? 

This was what the lobby looked like most of the time. It was weird to me to see all of these people just hanging out with their laptops, but I think you could get a good deal on Wi-fi? Maybe they paid cool looking people to come hang out? I don't know, but it was always packed.

This is my room. This picture makes it look scary, but that could be a mix between my picture skills and the fact that I only had one light on. Something that I thought was cool was that every. single. thing. in this room was for sale. The hangers, the pillows, the blanket on the bed (it was a $150 Pendleton and I considered it for a half second), everything.

This was my favorite part of the room [insert fat joke here?]. Look how cute this fridge is! This was the mini bar. They had fun sodas and candies for 300% markup! Yay!

I know that these TKTS stairs have kind of become the hallmark of Times Square, but they weren't up last time I was in New York so even though I've seen them in a million movies, I had to get a picture. But because of aforementioned movies, I was scared to walk on them. I'm a dork.

I was sending Jonathan all sorts of pictures of my trip and he said - why aren't you in any of them? Well because I don't like talking to strangers. So...problem solved! A weird half face picture in Bryant Park.

Here's a fun panoramic I got of Bryant Park. I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to walk to Central Park because I'd been binging on Law and Order:  SVU episodes and irrationally feared running into a dead body/nefarious serial killer. Also, I'd never been to Bryant Park and I kind of like it more? It was fun and I wanted to play chess or something.

This was the highlight of my trip (sorry, work!). I got to see the opening night of Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal's Broadway debuts in "The Real Thing." I splurged a little and got seats 14th row center. I sat like 3 rows behind the playwright!  The play was awesome and everyone was so dreamy. They incorporated a little singing into the scene changes so even though it wasn't a musical like I had originally planned on seeing - I got to hear a little bit of singing. It was so fun.

This was an amazing dessert I got one night at a fancy restaurant. Jonathan and I had been watching a lot of "Master Chef Junior" at the time and I was feeling rather fancy so I got the deconstructed s'mores dish. The white little chips were the marshmallows, the ice cream tube was the chocolate, and there was some graham cracker crumbs for crunch. The pink egg shaped stuff was a berry sorbet. It was tart and so delicious. 

One of the hotel perks I love most is room service. I got in pretty late one night and decided to check it out. The food was delicious, but of course I had to document the tiniest Tabasco bottle.

This was my last photo of the trip. OMG. Shake Shack. I'm drooling all over my keyboard. My parents encouraged me to check it out because they really liked it when they had visited NYC in September. I'm so glad I did. The black and white shake will change your life!

 I had so much fun, but I  wish Jonathan could've come with me. It ended up being such a quick trip (I was there 2 days total) that we weren't sure if it would be worth it? One day though, we're going to get back there and I will drag Jonathan to ALL OF THE MUSICALS and we will eat ALL THE FOOD.