New York, NY June 30-July 3 - Unique New York!

We made it into the city around 2 and headed for the hotel so we could park our car. Driving through the city was extremely hard. The roads are tiny, there is a TON of traffic, and every one drives like a maniac. It was also really hard to get to the hotel because the street it was on was blocked off for a gay pride parade. Thankfully when we asked the cop if he could let us past the barrier to drive to our hotel he said yes. Once we made it to the hotel and payed we too much for parking we met up with  Hannah in the hotel lobby. Since it was too early to check in we left our bags in the car and walked around looking for a place to eat. We found this lace called Martinique that looked good so we check it out. Here we had some delicious pizzas and a turkey club sandwich.

 After lunch we decided to go check out Time Square. This place was awesome. There are a ton of huge screens all over that are playing all sorts of ad's. There are a bunch of street performers dressed up as Elmo, Batman, Iron Man, there are people who painted their whole bodies and a bunch of other weird people. There were also a lot of cool stores here. They had a huge M&M store, a big Hershey's store and a bunch of restaurants. The M&M store was really cool because you could get every color. 

One really cool restaurant was this place called The View. It was a lounge on top of this hotel that slowly spun around so you could see the whole city while you were drinking and eating. After getting a few drinks at The View we headed back to the hotel to chill before dinner. 

The first night in the hotel we had a tiny room with one bed for all 3 of us :( it was pretty brutal. To make it better though we decided we should get some sushi once dinner rolled around. The sushi place we chose to eat was called Koi. It was a really cool candle lit sushi place inside this hotel. Here we had some amazing sushi, sake, rolls, and dishes. All of it was extremely good but it still wasn't as good as Uchi or Musashino back in Austin. After sushi we decided to walk around the city some more and check out the night life. The city is awesome looking at night. All the buildings are lit up and the sky never really looks that dark because there are so many city lights. After walking around we decided to get some desert at this place that is famous for having frozen hot chocolate. Here we had some Frozen Hot Chocolate and some Peanut Butter Frozen Hot Chocolate. Both were freaking amazing!

The next day we woke up and headed to the Financial District to check out the 9/11 memorial and wall street. First we checked out the 9/11 memorial and the new tower they are building where the old ones were. It was really crazy to see the place where thousands of people were murdered over 10 years ago. Next we headed down to wall street. This was one of the coolest parts of New York(For me at least[isaac]). The street is cobble stone and all the buildings are very old and inspiring. Here we saw the New York Stock Exchange building where the pit used to be. This building would have been amazing to see in its hay day back when the pit was full of traders hooping and hollering. Now the pit no longer exists and it is mostly Market Makers in there. Next we saw the old Federal Reserve building with the statue of George Washington in the front of it. This was also a really cool building that you could tell had a ton of history. Next we saw what has to be the most famous part of Wall Street and why they say there are Bulls on Wall Street, the Charging Bull. This statue was awesome to see and has to be one of my favorite(isaac) parts of the city.

After seeing the financial district we decided to get some lunch. We ended up picking this place called Delmonico's which has been in the same building since 1827! This place was AWESOME! The atmosphere was great and the food was even better! It was true fine dining in the heart of the financial district. Here we had some amazing lamb chops, red snapper, garlic herb mashed potatoes, and some king crab mac & cheese. After lunch we grabbed a cab and headed back to to hotel.





Once dinner came around we decided to try this place called Patsy's Pizzeria, it was in the top 25 pizza places in New York so we thought we had to check it out. Here we had some AMAZING margarita pizza. The pizza was cooked to perfection and the crust was some of the best I have ever had. We also had 2 pastas that were very delicious and a caprese salad that was extremely fresh and delicious!

The next day we headed for Chinatown! This part of town was crazy! every one around us was chinese, all of the banks were in english and chinese, and there were a ton of nasty chinese fish and meat markets that smelled AWFUL! One of them had dehydrated shrimp, clams, and crabs... I mean who would eat this crap! its like the beef jerky of sea food. These markets also sold whole chickens, ducks, squids and even pig heads. After getting our china town fill we headed to get a little mexican food at this place called Tortilla Flats.

Here we had some very good queso and guacamole. On top of that our waitress was very cool and didn't card us so we were able to have some ice cold margaritas that were not bad at all. For our meals we had Taco's Al Pastor that we established were not bad, but not the greatest, a chicken enchilada that was really good, and a mexican short stack(3 tortillas stacked with chicken,cheese, and beans in   between them) that was pretty good.

After lunch we headed to this cool park/garden thats on top of a bridge called           . This was really cool because you felt like you were kind of in nature and stuff  but its right in the middle of the city on a bridge. It was also good to see some lush green plants are being in the concrete jungle all day! After walking through the garden we wanted to get a little snack before heading back to the hotel so we went to this really cool doughnut shop we saw the night before called Doughnut Plant New York City. They had a bunch of crazy types of doughnuts but we ended up just getting glazed doughnuts that tasted very authentic and home made.

Once dinner came around we headed to this little place called Tappo's Thing Crust pizza that was right next door to the hotel. This was a cool little restaurant that had some live jazz music and delicious food. Here we got some cheesy garlic bread, another caprese salad, and we all split another margarita pizza. This pizza was very good. it was super thin crust and very crunchy. That being said we still liked Patsy's pizza more. This waitress was also very nice and didn't ID us so we were able to enjoy a couple of beers with our pizza. After dinner we got some wine and champagne and headed back to the hotel room to hang out there. The next day we woke up and headed to check out the FSG manhattan branch that was only a couple blocks away. This was by far one of the coolest offices of FSG's that I have seen. After seeing the office we got some breakfast at this little bagel place and headed back to the hotel to chill before we had to say good bye to Hannah and head to Boston!

Overall New York was an amazing city and we had a blast with Hannah! The city is very inspiring and while you are there you just want to do bigger things. I don't know if its because you are just surrounded by big buildings or what but the city is extremely inspirational!

Here are some more pics we took through out the city!