I took a trip with my boyfriend to New York over the 4th of July weekend. It was also our celebration of our "meeting each other" anniversary, so the timing was just right for a weekend trip. Today I will tell you about day 1 of our trip.
Before the trip, I spent a few hours at my favorite salon in DC, getting all sorts of spiffed up, with a new haircut and a pedicure. I'm not normally the type of girl who goes and gets "mani-pedis" (can you see me making a disgusted face as I say this?), so I enjoyed a chance to get pampered at the salon.
To get to NYC, we took a ride aboard the Washington Deluxe (which is not deluxe, but certainly is freezing cold) and exited at Penn Station in the mid-evening.
We stayed at a hotel in Soho. I thought it was a great location, probably the best location that we've stayed at during our past 3 trips to New York. I liked that we were in walking distance of lots of restaurants, bars, and other sights. (The hotel also had a smartly-designed glassed-in porch, on which I enjoyed my free breakfasts of cheese omelets every morning.)
Shortly after we got settled in the hotel, we searched for a place to eat dinner. I like using apps like Time Out New York, Yelp, or Urbanspoon. Searching for restaurants only when necessary makes going on vacation so much more spontaneous. We usually don't make a lot of plans in advance, because we like to just relax on vacation and not feel rushed like we're on a middle school field trip.
That evening, we ate at a Latin American restaurant, Ideya. What is the number one sign of authentic Latin food? Goya products. Latin people love their Goya. If Goya sold Adobo-scented deodorant, it would probably sell like nobody's business (except that it would be Goya's business, and they would have a lot of it). To put the Goya-love in perspective for you, this restaurant had a display case full of Goya juice, right in the front of the bar. For dinner, I had pico de gallo with plaintain chips, bacalaitos (fried salt cod, a Puerto Rican favorite), pork with rice, flan, and a coconut mojito on the side. While I can't scientifically put Ideya's claims of "the best mojito in the City" to the test, I can anecdotally agree to this, based on my sample size of n=1. Call it a case study in rum drinks, if you will.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on Day 2 of my trip.
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