New York City: Day 7

Day 7 we decided we wanted a real breakfast rather than Starbucks, so we wandered a few blocks from our apartment and found Cafe Habana, a Cuban style diner. Nathan had the award winning Cuban sandwich, voted “Best Meal Deal of the DAY” and I had a ham and spinach omelet with Cuban style potatoes as a side. It was really small and quite hot inside even though all the windows were open, but it was probably one of the hottest days we experienced in New York. It was packed, which is always a good sign! The food was delicious.

After breakfast we popped down to the subway and unknowingly took the express train rather than the local train, which took us all the way up to Harlem. This was our second and last subway oops of the whole trip, and after this we were PROS. The New York subway system makes transit in Edmonton look like a joke.

NYC tip: Pay attention to the subway trains – express means no in-between stops, local means allllll the stops. Uptown means the train runs north, and downtown means the train runs south. Buy a metro card to save yourself some money!

We took the local train back to Columbus Circle and rented bicycles for an afternoon ride in Central Park. Now I’m not one for athletic activities, at ALL. I am prone to hurting either myself or others by way of flailing limbs. I haven’t really ridden a bike since my pre-teen years, but I was drawn to the idea of flying through Central Park on a bike rather than taking a slower paced horse-drawn carriage ride, although that was what we had originally planned on doing since it’s so iconic and we WERE on our honeymoon.

Anyways – we made sure that my bike had a basket (a necessity in my opinion) and off we went to explore the giant green space that is Central Park. We spent 2-3 hours pedaling a total of 15 km or one and a half full loops around the entirety of the park…talk about EXERCISE people! We had quite a few pit stops but a few of them involved popsicles and photo ops so I could pretend it wasn’t because of my lack-of-in-shapeness and extremely unattractive smoker-sounding breathing due to the paths deciding to sporadically incline (aka. small ass hills).

Our bikes were both red which symbolized our looooooove (not intentional). Our sweaty, bike-ride-in-the-sun, honeymoon love. It was honestly such a blast, definitely top 5 New York experiences for us.

We returned our bikes and took the subway to midtown and found a random Italian restaurant on urban spoon for dinner, called Ceci. Our spontaneity totally paid off because I had some of the best pasta ever – fiocchi quattro formagi stuffed with pear, marscapone, ricotta, provolone and parmesan sautéed with asparagus and cherry tomatoes in a truffle butter sauce – need I say more? I apologize for the worst photo ever because of the low light ambiance in the restaurant, but I had to share the cheese explosion on my plate. It lasted for a total of about 5 minutes because I ate it so fast.

We walked to Magnolia Bakery for dessert (I highly recommend this) and indulged in a white chocolate walnut brownie and a whoopie cookie with maple cream cheese filling. We ate them while sitting on the steps near Rockefeller Center. I swear we were in midtown around 30 Rock more than any other place in NYC…we definitely don’t need to visit that area on our next trip because we’ve seen every square inch!

We then made our way to the Imperial Theater to see a Broadway show. We bought tickets online the night before for “Nice Work If You Can Get It” starring Matthew Broderick! It was incredibly entertaining and both Husbie and I loved every minute. If you love the glitz and glam of the 1920’s and if you love to laugh then you will adore this play. Its full of shenanigans and an unlikely love story between a millionaire playboy and a criminal bootlegger. PLUS we got to see one celebrity while in New York City, who just so happened to also be in the one Broadway show we saw. Hi Matthew Broderick! You were awesome on Broadway and I want to be your real life friend and go on couples dates with SJP.

After the show we witnessed a rap music video in the making in Times Square involving a rapper sitting in the bed of a pickup truck doing his thang with a dude holding a camera walking behind the truck, filming. Lots of scantily clad women followed like the rapper was the Pied Piper of Original G’s. We caught a cab home and stopped in a random pub called Firefly on Spring Street for a late night snack of spinach and asparagus dip and “iced tea”, which was not Nestea, but actual cold tea. In itself it would probably be delicious, but not when you’re expecting Nestea. The dip wasn’t too good either – this was probably our biggest food fail of the trip. We should have noticed that they weren’t a very busy pub and steered clear!

Lessons Learned: There’s a difference between the “express” train and the “local” train, and there’s a difference between AMERICAN iced tea and CANADIAN iced tea!