Happy Hump Day, everyone! As promised, here is day one of my NYC trip with my best friends! 

Rachel and I got in incredibly late the night before and were starving, so after we met Sarah at the hotel, we dropped off our bags and walked a several blocks over to grab a few slices of pizza to bring back to the hotel to eat before we passed out. On our way back to the hotel, I took this shot above of One World Trade Center. 

NYC Day 1: 

Central Park

We kicked off our NYC trip by grabbing some coffee and breakfast at the Starbucks at our hotel and took the train to Central Park. Before we got to the park, we stopped in a small cafe/bakery for some water and a bathroom break. Rachel and I went outside to wait for Sarah since she was sending some emails for work and the building in the photo below was what we saw. I couldn’t believe the details on it! Isn’t it gorgeous?!

The flowers and trees were absolutely beautiful! We walked around through the park, catching up with each other and people-watched.

I couldn’t resist looking at all the adorable puppies people were walking and playing with! I really, really, really wanted to play with them too, haha!

This shot of the trees below is one of my favorites! I seriously have a thing with trees. Can you imagine a wedding taking place here? So pretty! 

We thought it was appropriate to take a picture with the Friends fountain in the background while were were at it.

Since we had actually sat on the fountain about a decade ago, we decided to look at the fountain from afar since so many people were starting to show up. 

I loved people-watching at Central Park. Even though it wasn’t too early, there were already a ton of people biking, kids playing with their parents and lots of people running/walking for their morning workout. 

We decided to stop for a brief moment in the park so Rachel could see the famous Balto dog statue. Where I’m sitting here is right across from the statue. We were just watching kids climb the rock so their parents could take pictures of them, haha! 

Lunch

As we were looking for food near the Broadway Theatre, a car pulled up to the theatre’s back entrance where we were walking so Rachel and Sarah seriously thought they saw Bette Midler! I couldn’t see anyone (#ShortPeopleProbs) so I’ll take their word for it, haha!

We wanted to find some lunch before heading to our show and every place was full! Even Chipotle was packed! We settled on Guy Fieri’s restaurant which was right around the corner from the broadway theatre. We started off with fries as a appetizer and man, it was spicy!!! Definitely not my kind of fries, but it was flavorful…ish. 

I wasn’t feeling well so I went with the chicken Cobb salad for something light. It was pretty bland in my opinion. The bacon added some flavor to it, but I definitely would not get it again. Sorry, Guy. 

Hello Dolly! 

After lunch, we walked outside and there were tons and tons of people everywhere! We were 30 minutes early too (wait until you see the video)! We had some pretty great seats up on the balcony so we could see the entire stage. 

Not going to lie. I wasn’t too excited because I’m not a big musical fan and didn’t grow up watching Bette. I was there for the dancing (hello, drill team girl, here!), but when I saw David on the cast list, I about died! #ILoveFrasier I was so excited to see him perform live!

They all did such a wonderful job! The singing was phenomenal and the dancing was out-of-this-world! My other favorite actors? Gavin Creel and Taylor Trensch! The characters they played were my absolute favorite! #pudding!

Rachel obviously nerded out because she loves Hello Dolly! and Sarah? Well, you’ll just have to wait for the vlog to see what’s in her cup for her to be smiling like that, haha! 

Brookfield Place / Newark

After the show, we changed up our plans and decided to switch things up. Since we were still full from lunch, we wanted to head back to the area near our hotel to put up our things from the show. We walked around the outside of Brookfield Place (shopping mall) and just took in the scenery. This shot shows just how close One World Trade Center is to the shopping center.

And this shot is of the Newark skyline. It was pretty cool looking at New Jersey as the sun was setting.

We obviously had to take another sister selfie for the trip with Newark behind us.

I asked the girls to do a silly shot after our nice shot. Rachel happily obliged. Sarah did not. So, what happened afterwards?

Rachel tried to force Sarah to do a silly face and Sarah obviously still stood her ground, hahaha! 

9/11 Memorial

On our way back to our hotel, we strolled by the 9/11 Memorial and it was breathtaking! Since there was a ton of people everywhere, I took a quick snap of this scene. We decided to come back early on the next morning to experience it in a much more quieter setting.

Dinner at Eataly

My favorite part of the first day of our New York trip? Carb-Heaven. Having dinner Eataly was the perfect way to end the first day of our weekend! We talked about what success means to us, entrepreneurship and of course, the food! 

Before we sat down, we walked around the store portion of Eataly. They had everything from cookbooks to beauty products to pasta to cheese to a million different kinds of olive oil! 

‘Truffle’ and ‘pasta’ may be the most perfect word combination. Ever. By the way, you can order from Eataly’s online store! 

Here’s part of the olive oil wall. I should’ve taken a panoramic shot of the wall; it was that large, ha! But don’t you fret, you’ll see it on the vlog!

Above each segment of the olive oil wall, they had signs to guide you on what kind of olive oils would be best for what kinds of meats or dishes you’re preparing. It was pretty cool to see a map of where the olives are grown too.

Cheese! Cheese! And more cheese! My face could’ve broke out just looking at all the cheese, but will you look at all the different kinds of dairy goodness they had? This photo is just a tiny snippet of their cheese selection!

We started off dinner with this amazing appetizer! I forgot what it’s called, but we had this with some bread and olive oil. Just slice the mozzarella, put some on your bread, choose from their toppings and drizzle olive oil and eat! Left to right: caramelized onions, sun-dried tomato pesto (we think that’s what it’s called) and roasted red peppers. We had them alone, then changed up the combinations, but whatever way we had it was still delicious.

That wasn’t good at all. Nope. 

For our main course, I got a wild mushroom flat pasta dish. Usually, I don’t order pasta without some kind of meat, but this was AH-MAZING! Fresh pasta is where it’s at and man, I’m drooling just looking at this photo.

Sarah got this amazing pasta with barbecue meat and Rachel got a lasagna. I guess I was so hungry because I forgot to get a picture of Rach’s lasagna, haha!

We also ordered this margherita pizza, but were so full that we could only eat two slices out of it. I was so bummed we couldn’t teleport this back to Texas or even had a way to heat it up (I don’t do cold pizza, ew) at the hotel. 

I hope you enjoyed my personal post of what we did and ate (because ‘Always Hungry’ is my name) during the first day of our NYC trip! More posts to come because I took way too many photos to put it all in one post, ha! Feel free to check out our NYC trip from January because we did some touristy things too! Gah, I love New York! 

If you’ve been to NYC, what are your favorite things to do and place to eats while you’re there?

Please let me know in the comments because I’m sure NYC will be a yearly thing!

A big thanks to my bestie, Sarah, for booking and planning this trip! Love you, sister!