I got to visit NYC this past weekend with Lamiya to see our good friend Neha and her new apartment! We met Neha through our college dance team where she managed our crazy 9 hours of practice a week on top of working full time in Charlottesville. This girl basically does it all and is so much fun and we missed her after she moved up to New York for her new job! I’m so glad we were able to visit her this past weekend, catch up and catch a glimpse of life in NYC! Scroll down for more pictures!

This trip had been in the books for a couple of months now and both Lamiya and I were so excited for it to finally happen. A weekend to travel and have fun amidst the crazy fall wedding season was absolutely what I needed 🙂 In hopes of remembering everything we did the next time I visit or anyone asks for recommendations, here’s a blog post with all the places we visited! Both Lamiya & I had already been to New York before so we had some basic places to hit up like Times Square (but during the day), Central Park and the Empire State Building. We hit up the Empire State Building first since we were dropped close to it near Madison Square Garden. Not only did we circle around the block to find the building that we had passed (how you miss the tallest building ever, don’t ask hahaha) and then we realized in the lobby of the building that the reason neither of us had been to the top before was because you need (somewhat pricey) tickets!! So instead we took a bunch of photos in the lobby and laughed so much that the security guard started laughing with us.

While in Madison Square Park I freaked out when I saw “NY” in certain lettering, running over to a building across a park, only to realize while running that I was in New York so it could have been any generic sign saying NY….. but it actually was indeed the Sony building! My brother interned there over the summer so I had to take a picture and send it over to him 🙂 If he ever ends up working there, I will be back to visit a ton! After that we met Neha for happy hour in Union Square. The night was capped off by meeting my friend Rasika who now lives in Hoboken for her job (can’t believe we’re all grown up!!) and going to the Max Brenner’s chocolate bar! We got the classic chocolate fondue which included marshmallows (I ate 2!), strawberries, a crepe with chocolate, and a waffle with more chocolate. This was topped off by a chocolate martini and it was safe to say by the end of the night we were pretty set in terms of chocolate for the rest of the trip. The night ended with incredible skyline views from the top of Neha’s apartment, watching Tangled and finally getting to taste Neha’s (famous) veggie burgers. She would send our team snapchats of cooking them all the time and now I can truly say that they live up to the hype!!!

The next day we went to Cafe Bene in East Village whose menu had literally every kind of food you could possibly want for brunch, it was amazing 🙂 Afterwards we went to Times Square and quickly got overwhelmed by the crowds of people and opted for a quick stop inside the giant H&M there. We then went to the New York Public Library and Bryant Park and honestly, this was my favorite place from this trip! Call me a dork, I’ll take it! The architecture was incredible, it was nestled right next to the park, and it was exactly how I had imagined all the libraries would be like at UVA before I actually started college. We also saw a bride getting into her getaway car and I fangirled entirely too much and tried to see if I recognized the photographer. For the rest of the day we went to the Highline and I got to see it from the opposite side than when I had last visited in the beginning of this year with Kavita! It’s super pretty and vibrant during the summer and I loved being able to see the skyline as it turned to dusk 🙂 We had dinner and the best drinks at Eataly and then went to a bar whose inside looked like Luray Caverns and had the best throwback music ever!!

Here’s the pictures from our time there, a mix between iPhone & camera pictures! 

The next morning I got to meet up with my friend Sam (who works for the NY Times and is doing amazing things) for brunch at the Sojourn on the Upper East Side! We then made a super quick trip over to the Met and Central Park before heading back to Hudson Yards to catch our bus back to D.C. It was such a fun weekend and totally reminded me of how different NYC is than DC! Although I loved my time there and love the fact that it’s the city that never sleeps since I am a night person through and through, I think I can now say I’m a D.C. kind of girl! But I do hope to go back again and visit more places in NYC. As put best by our Lyft driver “you can never quite have seen it all in New York City.”