Disclaimer: this post will be photo-heavy and this wordy. A lot of my time in NYC was spent with friends, which doesn't really lend itself to a verbose trip report. Here are the potentially interesting parts of my trip.
Prologue: Having started the planning process for this trip over 6 months prior to the departure date, I naturally went through a lot of iterations, as you could tell from my introduction. For my NYC hotel, I was originally planning to stay at the Westin New York Grand Central with SPG points. Enter Club Carlson and their amazing stay 1 night, get 1 night, and stay 1 night, get 50K point promos. I quickly did a couple of mattress runs at my local Country Inn for $90 and I had enough nights/points to spend 3 nights at the Radisson Martinique.
After landing at JFK, I took the Airtrain to Jamaica station and then the subway to Grand Central. From there, I hoofed it to the Radisson. It's not much to look at from the outside with construction scaffolding in front and quite easy to miss. One thing I noticed while staying here is that a lot of airline crews use this hotel as well.
During check-in, I was acknowledged as a gold elite member and was informed that I had been "upgraded" to the penthouse level. I was totally excited about this until I found out later that it just meant I had a small window and a longer elevator wait. :-P
Some shots of the room:
King size bed to the left of the entrance
Small seating area to the right with random pillar in the middle of the room
Extremely small window. What good is the penthouse level if you can barely look out the window?
Nice welcome gift. I'm a huge fan of welcome gifts. They also provided a couple bottles of water as well.
I had only been to New York City once as a little kid. Though I'm from California, a lot of my high school and college friends have moved out here over the years and it was great to have a meal with a different friend every day. Some food samples:
Pastrami on rye from Katz Deli. (apologize for the poor photo quality)
Pork chop over rice from Hua Ji Pork Chop, a great deal for just $5 and delicious!
Beef buns from Ippudo ramen
Hakada classic with extra pork belly from Ippudo Ramen
Other highlights that I didn't take photos of: lobster sliders during happy hour at the Lobster Joint, Shake Shack.
The first of many cups of boba. I'm a boba connoisseur so I consider it my job to sample various places in different locations.
I also did the usual sightseeing things:
Central Park from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel
The Taiwan flag in Chinatown!
The weather was AMAZING too. Beautiful skies
The Freedom Tower, nearing the end of construction
Other highlight from my trip: Getting the last two rush tickets to see Kinky Boots, which is an outstanding musical. Totally pumped that it won the Tony for Best Musical. Definitely see it when it tours your city.
Before I knew, three days had flown by and I was ready to depart on the next leg(s) of my journey: flying around the world on three of the top first class airlines.