You guys asked for a blog post of our New York City trip, and here it goes. I was not prepared for this post; therefore, the qualities of the photos are not that great. However, I hope you find this post useful for your next visit to New York City.
What can you do in NYC if you only have 24 hours to spend in the city? Honestly speaking, you can do a lot, and here’s how. My mom, sister, and I visited NYC for only 24hrs this gone weekend, and we did so much more within those hours than I have done all the times I have visited NYC. I have spent weekends and weeklong in NYC, and I did nothing compared to this trip.
Our 24hrs started at 3 pm on Saturday when we checked into the Dylan Hotel NYC. If you watched my IG story hotel room tour, I told you guys I wouldn’t recommend that hotel to anyone to stay. But they redeemed themselves y’all. We asked for an early check-in on our drive up from Maryland, and they agreed to at least check us in at noon. Which was not bad; we would just grab breakfast since we left MD at 5 am that morning.
When we got to the hotel, the gentleman who was to check us in offered us the penthouse suite to check in early. We agreed to pay the extra cost for the suite since it would accommodate the three of us. After we agreed on a price, his statement changed. The guest in the room has not left; therefore, we can no longer check-in earlier even though we upgraded to the penthouse suite. He apologized and said that the guest was still in the room. Okay, sir, how did you not know that two seconds ago, when I agreed to pay you extra money for the room, you agree to check us in earlier than noon as discussed.
At that point, I was still patient and told him that’s okay. He said to come back at 12 pm like we originally agreed over the phone. We left and went for breakfast. We came back at 12:30 pm, and this man was still telling me the guest has not checked out yet. This is the point of the drama that I would like to point out to those who LOVE to check out later than agreed upon by the hotel that you inconvenience other guests. Because that’s precisely what happened here, next time, please check out early because it inconveniences others, and it embarrassed the hotel.
Anyway, the back and forth lasted until 3:45 pm before they could check us in. The Manager came and apologized; the hotel compensated us for the upgrade.
The rooms are a bit beat down and old, but the staff members are nice, they cater to us the entire time and even gave us an extra bed. Our room had a balcony, dining room, living room, and a massive master bedroom with a walk-in closet. The hotel does need a little TLC; even the elevator was making noise when we got in it. However, the hotel is centrally located, it’s a 9mins drive and 20 mins walk from Town Square. It’s located between E 41st and Maddison Ave. They offer discounted parking; however, we found a parking space right in front of the hotel and paid $12/2hrs and walked to all our locations.
Okay, now that the hotel drama is out the way, lol, let’s get into our activities and what we did for 24hrs in NYC. On Saturday night, we visited the Empire State Building. We purchased our tickets from Groupon, which was very affordable for the three of us. We did the 7 pm Sunset tour, which was so amazing. This was my mom and sister’s first time visiting the building. This was also my mom and sister’s first trip to NYC. My little sister aced the 9th grade and got a special honor in her school, so we treated her with this trip.
After our tour, we had dinner at Benjamin Stake House, right next to our hotel. Please make sure you read the menu and prices online before visiting any restaurants in NYC. If you don’t do this already for any restaurants you visit, make sure you start to do that now. The price indeed caught us off guard at this restaurant. However, this was the best steak I have ever had in my life. The food was truly amazing. If you want to splurge a bit on food when you’re in NYC, visit this restaurant.
After dinner, I was tired and went to bed. My mom and sister spent their time on the balcony enjoying NYC at night. The next morning, we did a 9 am photo shoot and were ready to conquer our day. We had breakfast in Bryant Park, and it was so lovely. This was the point I thought about moving to NYC, but we will table that for another day. After breakfast, we went for our next activity, which was also booked via Groupon, and it was the Lady Liberty cruise. It was a 60 mins cruise for three and under $70. All our activities were very affordable because we got most of them from Groupon. The cruise gave us a tour of NYC on the water. We visited lots of landmarks and Lady Liberty herself. We, however, did not get off the boat. We only got close enough to see her. Our tour went from 2:30-4 pm.
After the cruise, we returned to Times Square and got on the Hop on Hop off bus. This was the highlight of our trip. We did the city tour and learned so much about NYC. We visited so many historical sites, and we went to the famous 10007 zip code. If you don’t know much about this zip code, this is where Jay-Z, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and other famous celebrities live. The tour cost us about $100 for the three of us, and it was for a little under two hours. If you ever want to see NYC without walking too much, this is the activity for you. My sister was so happy on this tour; it made my entire day.
After the tour, we had dinner in Korean town. I mean, we had to. This one was for my K-Drama lovers. However, lol the food was disappointing. I won’t mention the restaurant name because I believe in second chances, but the food was disappointing. It was overly salty, and customer service was very poor. After dinner, we hit the road by 10 pm for MD. We quickly stopped to see Town Square at night, but it was raining, so that did not go well.
So, to sum this very lengthy blog post up, we saw NYC from both land and water, we went shopping, we stay at a decent hotel, we visited the empire state building, we had some good and not so good food, and we were hit with how expensive NYC is. Overall, the trip was 10/10, and I would diffidently recommend an NYC trip for the summer.
Xoxo, Mo!