in a new york state of mind

i’d like to say that we got up early for that one full day we had to play in the city, but i’d be lying.  we slept in a little - which i guess is pretty understandable given the fact that we’d just gotten back from japan a couple of days before.  

our first stop that day was at ess-a-bagel, where the bean was thrilled to grab one of their beloved mr. nova lova sandwiches.  smoked salmon, sliced avocado and avocado cream cheese?  pretty much their idea of the perfect breakfast right there.

it was kinda weird to be back in front of rockefeller center after our pre-christmas trip.  this time there were no holiday decorations and no hub to guide us around.  although there were also a lot less people to elbow through, so i guess that was nice.

years ago during one of our visits to NYC, we’d done a cupcake crawl where we’d visited as many cupcake shops as we could in one day.  this time we decided to embark upon a chocolate chip cookie crawl, and our first stop was culture espresso.  this ended up doing double duty for us since i hadn’t had any coffee yet, so it was perfect.

the bean was a big fan of this first entry in our cookie crawl.  it was thick and chewy with no shortage of gooey chocolate chips while managing not to be overly sweet.

i was, of course, quite happy with my iced latte.  delish.

and then just down the street and around the corner, we found ourselves in another familiar area.  hello again, times square!

as we made our way around, something caught the bean’s eye.  the spring musical at school this year was “chicago,” so it was still fresh in their mind.

the great thing about not making any plans is that you can pretty much do whatever strikes your fancy in the moment.  it was about 1:15 at that point, and i hopped right onto the theater’s website and snagged some last minute seats for the 2:00 show.  don’t you love spontaneity??

it was actually really cool to find that the production at school was pretty close to the broadway version.  of course, it was a little more elaborate here and the performers are obviously seasoned professionals.  but still…the bean’s high school had done a pretty fantastic job in comparison.

next up was our second stop on the cookie crawl - bibble and sip.  here the specialty item is called a “chooukie” - a chocolate chip cookie/cream puff hybrid.  we paired that with their milk tea cloud cake and washed it down with an iced matcha latte (the bean) and a black float for me, which was cold brew topped with a salted vanilla cream.

making our way back towards rockefeller center, i glanced somewhat longingly at the theater where “wicked” was playing.  if we’d only had more time, we would have definitely have gone to see it.

radio city music hall selfie!

finding chip city in the bowels of rockefeller center wasn’t very easy.  we had to stop and ask someone for directions, and he teased us a little bit and said “bring me a cookie!” we told him we would, but he just laughed and sent us off in the right direction.

we picked two flavors to try and then added a third cookie to our order to bring to our friend upstairs.  it was really fun to see the surprise on his face as he watched the bean approach him with a treat to hand him.  

as we wandered around, we’d found a few japanese shops and had had fun looking around (and comparing the US prices vs. the ones in japan).  and then when we found this japanese market we decided to pick up some stuff to take back to the hotel and enjoy for dinner.

for our last stop, we headed down into the subway.

we’d seen an instagram post for the sweet shop, where they offered grab bags filled with british and swedish gummy candy.  and so while it wasn’t in the cookie category, we made an exception and ordered a couple of bags of treats.  that way we had some to try together and some for the bean to take to columbia and share with their roommate.

it had been a really long day, with tons of walking and sweating and snacking and laughing.  we’d had so much fun, and we’d discovered that we would still have a half day to spend together before the bean had to check in at their program.  woohoo!

while at that japanese market, the bean had picked up a big ol’ chunk of sushi grade salmon and said they wanted to just eat it in bites.  i thought they were joking, but when we got back to our room it occurred to me that we didn’t have a knife or a cutting board or anything to actually slice it up.  and so we ended our day with even more giggles as the bean did this:

gotta love it.