Perfect Day in NYC

Josh and I were lucky enough to spend a whole day in NYC a few days before Thanksgiving and it was such a fun day! My sister in law Tyra is the best and volunteered to watch our girls all day long, and it was so great to have a full day with just Josh. We woke up early and took the train from Summit, NJ to Penn Station in NYC. This was the commute Josh took into the city each morning this summer, so it was nice to have Josh as the tour guide :)

We walked around a bit and then headed to Petrossian Bakery to try out a couple of their famous pastries.

We walked across the street and ate them in Central Park. I've been to NYC before, but never to Central Park. It totally reminded me of scenes from Home Alone :)

 Josh had an almond croissant and I had a pain au chocolat. They were pretty good, but I have to say the croissants/pastries we had in Montreal the week before were better than these ones from Petrossian. Maybe we hit it on an off day? But it was still fun to try out Petrossian. 

 After that we walked around the 5th Avenue area, passing the Plaza hotel, Tiffany & Co, and other famous stores. We popped in to F.A. Schwartz for a little while and saw so many fun things our girls would have gone nuts over! (Are we horrible for not buying them anything?)

We got a kick out of their over-sized candy section. Yuck! If that gummy bear wasn't $25 it would have been funny to give someone as a joke :)

 We also popped into two pretty cathedrals along the way.

We made it to the Museum of Modern Art right as it opened at 10 am. I've been to the Met and the Guggenheim in NYC, but I hadn't been to the MoMa before and it was always on my list to do someday. I have so say, it was just as cool as I hoped it would be! It was just packed with so much good stuff, including lots of well-known pieces. I think my favorite parts were the Matisse room, Duchamp room, and the big collections of Picasso pieces. 

 Rauschenberg | Warhol

 Donald Judd | Matisse

 Van Gogh

Cezanne | Gauguin

Duchamp 

 Jackson Pollock

 Picasso

 Jasper Johns

Monet

Matisse

After the MoMA we met up with my cousin Diana, who lives in NYC and was having brunch nearby at Sarabeth's. Wish we could have spent more time together but it was fun to see her!

We hopped back on the subway and headed to lunch at the Shake Shack. 

We had heard a lot of hype about this place, but it completely lived up to all the hype. We loved it! The "concrete" (frozen custard) wasn't our favorite, but the burgers were awesome. 

 Next up we checked out the Museum of Natural History...Josh's pick. He was in heaven. He looked at displays of buffalo and walruses the same way I must have stared in awe at the art in the MoMA :)

 This is an actual tree stump (I don't know my tree terms) of a Giant Sequoia tree, and the amazing thing is that it showed the seeds and they are tiny. The seeds weigh 1/3000th of an ounce and the tree eventually weighs 65 billion times as much.

One of my favorite parts was the mineral room. I wasn't too interested in the polished gems, but these raw gems and minerals were so pretty! Josh was making fun of me for snapping so many pictures, but I loved the colors and natural forms. 

 Shout out to New Hampshire for producing these pretty green gems. 

 After a long time at the Natural History museum (it was huuuuuge) we walked to Levain bakery and got some of the best cookies I've ever had in my life. Yum.

 This picture doesn't do these cookies justice, but you can probably see through the wax paper that the cookies was huge. I have a big sweet tooth, but it took us a good 24 hours to finished our two cookies because they are so big and dense. Levain was another place that was totally hyped up and it was amazing!

 We ended our day by walking down Broadway and checking out Time Square. Then we hopped back on the train and headed back to New Jersey. 

It was the perfect day! We had such a good time enjoying great museums, great food, and great company.