A Traveler's Guide to New York City

You're likely to arrive in New York through LaGuardia Airport (LGA). From there it is super easy to grab a taxi and head to your hotel. We stayed at The Draper Hotel! This adorable boutique hotel is located in the heart of Midtown. It is just off 5th avenue and less than a mile from Times Square and the Empire State Building. It is walking distance to all sorts of activities, including shopping, dining, transportation and more.

The first thing I do in the morning is stop to grab a coffee and a croissant from my favorite bakery, Paris Baguette. They have so many locations across New York City, it's hard not to run into one. On this first day, we spent most of our time walking around and just exploring Midtown. Our second stop was visiting the famous 12-story Macy's to see where they hold the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then headed down a few blocks to arrive at Times Square! There is so much to do in Times Square, from Broadway shows, dining, sightseeing, viewing the huge billboards and more. It is one of the world's busiest tourist attractions to visit. Then head over to 5th Ave to check out all of the amazing luxury shops (these shops are huge! Some are almost 10 stories high). Then it is time for my favorite attraction, The Summit One Vanderbilt. The Summit is the tallest skyscraper in NYC and offers you 360-degree views of the amazing city. It is truly mesmerizing to see. We ended the day eating the BEST Italian food in the city. We had our reservations at the fine-dining restaurant Bice Cucina and I couldn't say enough great things about it. Then, head home to get some rest for the next day!

First things first... grab a coffee and breakfast at a local bakery (my favorite is Paris Baguette). Then we headed to Church at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The architecture of this church is breathtaking. After mass, we went right across the street to the Rockefeller Center to see the huge Christmas tree. You can take some amazing pictures here! Then it was time to go to Central Park. Central Park has a bunch to offer, including ice skating (if you are visiting in the winter), biking, sight-seeing, pedi-cab tours, walking and more. We did a pedi-cab tour on Christmas Day and had so much fun! The tour guide did such a good job listening to our recommendations and brought us to all the places we wanted to see in Central Park. We went to the famous Met steps, Strawberry Fields, Wollman Rink, Cherry Hill Fountain (where a lot of movies were filmed) and so much more. After our tour, we made reservations to ice skate at Wollman Rink. To end the night, we had dinner at Redeye Grill, just a few blocks from Central Park.

Today was a big historical sight-seeing day for us. We started it off by heading to the famous 9/11 memorial. It really takes your breath away when you start to see and read all about what happened in the museum! From here, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Eataly, which was right across the street. We had some amazing pizza. We then continued to head to the Brooklyn Bridge and Chinatown to get the best dumplings in the city (aka Vanessa's Dumpling House), then Little Italy (to grab a cannoli). To finish up this busy day, we headed to Rolf's German Restaurant for some awesome Christmas cocktails and then grabbed dinner at Barbunnia. We headed back towards the hotel for a late-night comedy show (which had us on our butts laughing so hard).

Today was another fun site-seeing day. Head to Times Square to get tickets for a double-decker bus (I recommend sitting at the top to get all the amazing views). There are a lot of different routes to choose from. We then headed to my favorite dessert place ever called Carlo's Bakery (if you've ever watched Cake Boss, then you've heard of Carlo's Bakery). My favorite dessert is their cannoli and lobster tails! If you want to do more shopping, you can head over to the shops and restaurants at Hudson Yards. Also, if you are traveling to NYC around Christmas time, Bryant Park has little shops to explore. They even have an ice skating rink if you didn't get to partake in ice-skating at Central Park. To end this amazing trip, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner and went to our favorite NYC sushi restaurant, NOBU.