theDIBB - Five Trips in Five Years... NYC May / June 2016

Five Times in Five Years...We Must Quite Like the Place!

Introduction and Index:

Welcome to my second NYC trip report which is going to be more of a photos-with-quick-explanations-and-tips rather than my usual very excessive waffling with the odd photo thrown in :blush:. This is because I didn't take any notes as I didn't plan to write a trip report, but I know NYC is a popular destination with Dibbers so I wanted to put something together, and I'd also like to have a nice little record of what we did on our fifth trip to the Big Apple.

Because this is an unexpected report, there is no pre-trippie but as a little bit of background, this trip was booked when we had to cancel our 2015 Florida holiday because we thought we would be moving to the States and needed to get all our ducks in a row. We couldn't get a refund on our BA flights, only a transfer within (I think) a year of booking so we 'had' to take an unplanned long haul holiday in 2016. There was only one choice as far as we were concerned, our favourite city in the world. We've been to New York every year since 2012 and every time we think we'll take a year off, we just can't bring ourselves to stay away! We all love it so much. Mat is now visiting NYC a few times a year for work so the girls and I feel it wouldn't be fair if we didn't get to go there fairly regularly too :D.

Because we were up against it financially when we booked and went on the trip (due to our potential move not happening and various other things), we unfortunately couldn't justify returning to our favourite hotel in the world, the Bryant Park Hotel. We spent a while looking for a hotel that wouldn't feel a big disappointment after the amazing BPH, but would also save us money. We came up with the Eventi in Chelsea (a Kimpton hotel) which looked lovely. We were actually quite excited about staying further downtown as during our 2015 trip (photo trip report hopefully to follow), we spent quite a lot of our time downtown and found that heading back to Bryant Park seemed quite a trek at the end of the day.

Not long before the holiday, we realised that the Eventi was still too expensive for our situation at that time so we spent a few days trying to come up with what seemed a pretty impossible task; find an equally nice hotel for a much cheaper price. Eventually we came up with the Duane Street Hotel in TriBeCa. We loved staying in TriBeCa for a change, it's a truly lovely part of Manhattan, nice and quiet, and the restaurant options are brilliant. The hotel itself was good and I would recommend it, however our room was tiny which for two people or a couple of nights would be fine, but we were four people staying eight nights, with a lot of luggage. We managed ok but storage was an issue and by the time we got home, we were happy to go back to the space of our own bedrooms and bathrooms.

In case you haven't read any of my other trip reports, we are me: Michelle, 37 at the time of the trip, DH Mat, 39 at the time, DD1 Seren, who had just turned 10, and DD2 Freya who was 8 during the trip. We flew to JFK at the start of May half term, Saturday 28th May 2016, and flew home on Sunday 5th June. We had a few restaurants booked and had a rough idea of places we wanted to visit, but it was very relaxed in terms of plans as we like to basically wander the streets in our favourite areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn while we're in New York.

Day 1: Travel day and John's of Bleecker Street

Day 2: Ellen's Stardust Diner, Central Park and the High Line

Day 3: The Odeon, MoMA, Grand Central Terminal and Sarabeth's TriBeCa

Day 4: Brooklyn Bridge, High Line and Pommes Frites

Day 5: Bubby's TriBeCa, East Village and Lower East Side

Day 6: American Girl, Bryant Park, Tony's Di Napoli and 9/11 Fountains

Day 7: Downtown, The Village, The Museum at FIT and Bubby's High Line

Day 8: One World Observatory, Tony's Di Napoli, School of Rock and Home