Life in the big city

Last week, my project manager found an awesome rate at a hotel IN the city...in the theatre district!! The hotel, whose rooms usually start at $395 per night, was running a special last week for $125 per night, which fit into our project budget. So, both my project manager and I decided to each get a room at the Milford Plaza. We shared a car (because parking in the big city overnight is uber expensive) and rode back and forth to NJ together each day.

The hotel room, itself, was nothing much to speak of. As a matter of fact, I've decided that the mark of a GOOD hotel room, in my opinion, is for it to have a nice sized bathroom, with ample counter space, and good water pressure in the shower. This hotel's bathroom was cramped, old, had a pedestal sink, and the water pressure in the shower was a total of 3 tiny streams of water that cut into my skin like lasers.

However, the LOCATION of the hotel, well it just doesn't get much better than that. And that was the draw, after all.

The best part about staying in the city was the variety. We would return to the hotel after work (between 8:30pm and 9:00pm), drop our bags off in our rooms, reconvene in the lobby and then set out on foot to find someplace to eat. Our dining options were limitless! I felt very European eating dinner that late every night...it's a very European thing to do. Apparently it's a very NYC thing to do, too, because the restaurants always had many patrons in them.

The first night we went to a Cuban restaurant called Havana Central. I don't know if I was just super hungry because it was 9:30 or what but their Sandwich Cubano was HEAVEN! MMMmm with a side of moro and a nice red wine sangria. Ahhhhh.

(Diversion - The next day, I had lunch with one of my clients in NJ. He took me to a place called Minado and their Sushi buffet was PHENOMENAL. Phenomenal.)

The second night we walked a bit further to a section of NYC known as Hell's Kitchen. Our waitress told us that it got the name from when they were building up that part of town, most of the bricks are red and the reflection from the water onto the brick radiated enormous amounts of heat onto the workers, so they gave it that name. There were SOOOO many restaurants in Hell's Kitchen. We stopped in a place called Chelsea Grill of Hell's Kitchen. Tiny, decently priced, and once again, DELICIOUS. I had a filet mignon salad and a Fat Bastard Cabernet. MMMmmm

The third night we walked down a different block (that we had discovered on night two as we were walking back to the hotel after dinner). There were several country - specific restaurants on that block, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Spain, France...and most of them were participating in NYC's price fixing program where hundreds of restaurants are setting one price and it usually includes your choice of soup/salad, entree, dessert, and an after dinner drink, all for like $24.95, or $29.99. So, we figured we'd give it a shot. We chose Brazil Brazil, and I must say I was a bit disappointed. The menu choices in their price fixing program were limited and I didn't feel like I was having a Brazilian experience (not quite sure WHAT that would feel like, but I didn't feel it). I had some sort of steak thing with onions, their house salad, a passion fruit mousse, and of course a glass of red wine. Good, but not FANTASTIC.

All in all, it was a fun experience, I REALLY felt like a local, but I would have enjoyed it soooooo much more if I could have kept company with my husband, or a girlfriend, or Jordyn, or my mom or sister, instead of with Harold.

(I'd just like to point out that my previous post was all about diet & exercise, and this post was all about pigging out.)