NYC Day Three - Off to NYC!

We both woke up early, excited to get going, packed up our things, got the dogs and house settled and met our Lyft a little after 7 am.

It was an easy ride to Union Station because of the Monday morning traffic, and we got there with plenty of time to relax.

We boarded our train around 8:30 and found a couple of seats across the aisle from one another (all the seats together were taken ☹️). We settled in and got on our way promptly at 8:50.

We're train people now. We take the train.

We arrived at Moynihan Station around 12:30 and mom and I both agreed that the renovations are beautiful. It has a ton of cute shops and restaurants. We popped out on to the street and got to see Madison Square Garden right across the street. We grabbed a cab and were on our way to our hotel, Hilton Garden Inn Central Park South. Check-in went quickly and they were able to allow us to check in early so we got to drop off our bags and sit down for a second.

We were a bit peckish so we headed around the corner to a shop that our concierge suggested called Gastro Market. They had a great hot and cold bar and we both had a great lunch and decided that it's our go-to place for snacks (and maybe even breakfast tomorrow??).

Highly recommend Gastro Market for the snacks and quick eats!

We continued walking towards Central Park and decided to take a pedicab tour to see the park a bit. Our driver took us on a whirlwind tour of the park and took great photos of me and mom at all the best locations.

We stopped by the Bethesda Fountain, saw the Boathouse, got some pics at Strawberry Fields and the Cherry Hill Fountain, and a lot of great shots of the very pricy real estate overlooking the park.

After the tour we walked back to our hotel (with a quick stop at Gastro Market for snacks!) and took a bit of a break before dinner. I booked more tickets and reservations for hijinx for us to get into the rest of the week, but apparently the tickets to the crown of the Statue of Liberty are all booked up for several months so we're going to have to plan to come back and go all the way up another time. We'll just be going up into the pedestal this time around!

Mom got caught up on some contracts for work and we relaxed for a bit before it was time to change to go to dinner at Benoit. We walked the couple of blocks to the restaurant (very happy with the hotel location...) and saw a TON of food trucks along the way.

So many food trucks! DC is getting the short end of the stick!

We got to the restaurant in no time and got seated for our reservation. Our waiter was an extremely tall Frenchman with a great accent. We had Benoit's take on Quiche Lorraine to start, then we both had filet mignon with steak frites, and shared the chocolate soufflé with salted caramel ice cream for dessert. And to finish we each had one of Benoit's madeleines before we started our walk back to the hotel.

Belated birthday dinner!

We decided to take a longer route back to see a little more of our neighborhood and stumbled upon Radio City Music Hall and Time Square and mom got some great photos (while risking getting run over by oncoming traffic...).

We found the Late Show and Times Square!

We got ready for bed and got to sleep so that we're rested up for ice skating at Rockefeller Center tomorrow morning!