new york, new york (part 1)

Disclaimer: Despite the fact that I have two great cameras, I left both of them at home...so you must deal with iPhone photos. 

This past weekend I went to New York City with one of my best friends and her mom so that she could look at wedding dresses for her upcoming nuptials. We have dreamed of J. Crew wedding dresses since we were freshmen in college, so it was an amazing opportunity for us to go!

I started out my journey by preparing with a fancy new purse. I had a perfectly decent purse that I use all of the time, but I wanted something that I could wear across my shoulder so it felt more secure. I found the perfect bag at Coach, and I'm in loooove. There are plenty of pockets and the color is beautiful.

My first purchase was this bottle of water in the airport. A note about airports: they take advantage of you. I mean, it's TSAs stupid rule that you can't bring liquids through, and then they charge you $6
 for a bottle of Smart Water? It's ridiculous.

We stayed at The Roosevelt Hotel, which was gorgeous in the lobby. The rooms were fairly nice as well, except one of our beds was so close to the wall with the bathroom door you had to sort of turn sideways and scoot into the bathroom. It was interesting. The only bad thing about this hotel is that they lost our reservation...oops! At least they had another room available!

Another thing of note: we were in SUCH a great location. We could walk nearly everywhere!

We all arrived Thursday evening at various times, so we woke up early Friday morning and went across the street to a little cafe across the street that served squagles (square bagels). It was delicious. We then prepared to head out into the blizzard...no joke, a blizzard. The snow was blowing so hard we had to bend over to walk against it. It was horrid. 

Here is S getting ready to brave the elements!

 We walked from our hotel (at 45th and Madison) to Rockefeller Center, which was only around 10 minutes but felt like forever in the frigid conditions.

Taking refuge in Rockefeller Center.

As you can see, the ice rink was completely covered in snow. Another note about NYC is that they have  sidewalk sweepers, which is maybe the greatest invention ever. The snow finally stopped around 4, and by the time we took a subway back uptown, the sidewalks were perfectly clear!

Anyway, we checked out the Lego store, which I think would have maybe held my little brother's attention for approximately 22140.235 hours when he was a little younger. Or maybe still, who knows.  Each of those little circles was full of different shapes and colors of legos...and it wrapped around to another side as well.

From the Lego store we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral for a quick walk through. Even though it is being renovated, it is gorgeous inside! I highly recommend adding the cathedral to your list of things to see.

We then walked up Fifth Avenue to see some of the shops...

Cartier. I mean, I'd take it...

A girl's playground

We also checked out FAO Schwartz, where apparently I only took pictures of candy...seems appropriate.

Every color of Peeps you could ever want....disgusting.

This is for you baby brother.

I mean, this just seems so excessive.

From there we headed downtown to eat and head over to S's first bridal appointment. We ate a this cute little store called Pret a Manger (Pret) which has premade food (think your grab and go section of your grocery store), but it's surprisingly good. They also had super cute artwork.

I don't have any pictures from S's appointment at J.Crew, but I was not impressed. The bridal salon was small and less than exciting, and the bridal consultant seemed less than thrilled about helping us out...which was interesting, since that was her job. I'm not really sure what was up with that.


From there we headed to another bridal shop near Time's Square called R. K. Bridal...also not super impressed. If you guys are interested in hearing more about our specific experiences, let me know and I will write a post about them. I'm trying not to turn this into my first novel here.

We grabbed some dinner and headed to Magnolia Bakery, which has several locations throughout the city. Yum.

And since we were there, we went by the ice rink again...and it was totally cleared off with people skating on it! Totally different view than 8 hours prior.

Whew! That brings me to the end of our first day in NYC. It was a lot of walking, a little bit of rudeness, and a TON of fun! I'm so glad that S and her mom let me tag along on this trip! It was definitely a great experience, and I was so excited to explore new york some more!