Hi Friends!
How’s the weather where you are?! Here in North Texas, it’s our first weekday snow day of the school year! School’s already been called off for tomorrow too! You guys know I love a snow day but it’s been a weird snowed-in experience because of the weekend. I’ve loved my lazy time with my favorite people BUT I do hope everyone resumes life/school on Wednesday. 🙂
If you missed it, I was DOWN for the count and very sick the last two weeks. I’ve gotten many of you on Instagram asking what’s going on. Without going into too many details, I thought I had the flu so I hunkered down to rest and recover. Fever, chills, body aches, etc. Instead of getting better, I started to get worse and finally went to Urgent Care where I learned I had a kidney infection. So while I was thinking I was “riding out the flu”. I was actually allowing an infection to get worse! Needless to say, I was expecting to feel better twenty-four hours after antibiotics and it took more like ninety-six hours of meds. I’m definitely feeling so much better and the extra days at home have definitely helped me rest up!
Now I’m BACK to regularly scheduled programming and sharing our Day Two of our New York City Trip. If you missed our first day, you can see it here.
Day Two we were up EARLY for a My Christmas in New York Tour. This tour spoke to me for a number of reasons….
- I didn’t know exactly how cold it would be when I booked, but the idea of seeing a bunch of sights on a bus versus walking sounded really good!
- I didn’t know how long Britt’s tiny legs would last in the cold.
- Instagram suggested a wide range of places we should get reservations that were super “Christmasy”, but we booked last minute. Most were full/sold out except this tour ended at Papillon Bistro. This tour is the ONLY way you could snag a reservation for that particular restaurant. It looked oh-so-cute and festive so I decided we’d try it.
Little did I know, the tour would pick us up RIGHT outside our hotel at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday. EASY!
It was a CHILLY day in NYC but we were so warm and cozy on the bus.
First stop was the Fox & Friends Area….we took a picture by the Fox tree.
Found this ADORABLE Avenue of the America’s tree as well.
We found the famous red ornaments on 6th Avenue…
And caught a cute view of Radio City Music Hall.
Stop #2 was 5th Avenue. We had time to check out a few buildings and hop back on the bus. This Louis Vutton building never disappoints.
I thought these trees were so cool. They contained a pine scent so every so often they’d shoot that delicious pine scent out and this whole street smelled divine! Isn’t that cool?
The window displays on 5th Avenue didn’t disappoint!
Stop #3 was a bit further down 5th…Ralph’s Coffee Shop was adorable!
Saks was looking just as gorgeous in the daytime.
The Rockefeller Tree/rink was WAY less crowded in the morning.
Can you tell we were COLD?!
I was shocked! The night before there were CROWDS of people in this area.
Stop #4 was Grand Central Station. This is REALLY hard to see but our guide told us a story about how this building was in terrible condition because of all the people who smoked inside. The city did a huge renovation and they left one black brick up there in the white arch to remind everyone of the transformation! CRAZY, cool, huh?
This girl was living her best Gossip Girl life! We made a Gossip Girl Tik Tok here that we thought was hilarious. The boys in our family were like, huh?
Stop #5 Lotte Hotel, which we’d actually also popped into the day before.
The rest of our people stayed on the bus to warm up but we enjoyed one last stroll where the Van Der Woodsen’s lived. 😉
Last stop of the tour {and three hours later} was Papillon Bistro ALL DECKED OUT FOR CHRISTMAS!
At this point our whole crew was ready for a little food! The menu was delicious French cuisine and everything we tried we loved.
LOOK HOW CUTE!!
From there we made a quick walk over to The Plaza but the hotel wasn’t feeling all the Christmas guests. We couldn’t go inside so we just snapped a quick pic.
We had Central Park Carriage Ride reservations and don’t let this pic fool you, we were FREEZING! Doesn’t Britt look COLD?! A carriage in NYC can only hold up to four people at once so we had to split into a girl/boy carriage.
Girl’s Carriage…
And the boys..
How it’s going now….versus how it started…
hahahaha! We kept saying that we needed to recreate that. We did our best!
Post carriage ride everyone was cold so we popped into the JW Marriott Central Park and all warmed up with hot chocolates and cookies. We hung out there for a bit and then started our walk to Radio City for the Rockettes!
The theater was absolutely STUNNING!
Ready for a SHOW!
What an extra festive way to end a super over-the-top Christmas-y day! Then we had dinner reservations at 7:30 at Haven Rooftop.
This restaurant was REALLY close to Radio City so we could walk right there. It also looked like a restaurant they added some lights/festivities to make it special during the holidays. It was a rooftop restaurant they covered and kept really warm.
I don’t even remember what I ate for dinner on this evening but I remember my people all enjoying their food. We walked back to the hotel right after and my crew was EXHAUSTED! We left the hotel at 7:45 that morning and got back at 9:00 that evening. WHAT an amazing day!!
Thanks for reading today, friends!
XO
