Week in the big Apple

Had amazing week in the Big Apple last week. Packed for an cold October month which was a mistake as we had some amazing weather for the week. With temperatures in the late 20’s it was definitely shorts and T shirts weather, Even managed to get a little sunburnt one day.

Stayed at the Eventi Kimpton Hotel on 6th and 30th, got a great corner room on the 8th floor which was a good size but most of all it was incredibly quiet. This is a good hotel from a location point of view as it’s pretty central and in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. It’s a great hotel with a great bar, however like most hotels in NY your not really in it long enough to spend large amounts of time using the amenities. We used the bar once as most of the time we where out and about either shopping, site seeing or eating and drinking.

Despite a number of trips to NY we hadn’t spent a lot of time in the Chelsea area, which is a shame because in the few days we did spend exploring it I thought it was a magic place. The Chelsea Market is must do visit a great selection of food stores as well as book stores, art galleries and various other shops. You can waste a lot of time in there browsing at a lot of stuff and all of it interesting. We went twice, first time was around 10am on a weekday, second time was 13:00 on a Saturday! DO NOT GO LATE ON WEEKENDS, the place was rammed absolutely rammed.

Another attraction we had never done although to be fair it wasn’t there in previous visits, was the Highline. This is essentially a length of old raised railway track, which has been converted into to a garden walkway. It’s a great way to see some of Chelsea as it takes you above the roads and in-between the buildings the bottom end takes you down to the Meat Packing District. This is another area that is now being gentrified, new shops and restaurants and an inordinate amount of night clubs make the place really buzzy. For a number of reasons, age mainly I can’t comment on any of the night clubs as I didn’t go into any of them, my loss I guess.

Eating wise we spread our selves around, Breakfast was mainly taken at the Hollywood Diner on 6th and 16th. Dinner took us out to places like the Gotham Bar and Grill a favourite of mine. We also met work colleagues at a place adjacent to the Chelsea Market called Buddakan which was super trendy and amazing food, it was just a little too dark, in fact it was as black as Newgate’s knocker.