Weekends in NYC 🗽

Fresh off of a weekend in NYC, I can’t say enough about that city. Dantan and I are old souls—meaning in our house you will hear 1940’s jazz crooning across our connected Google speakers quite nearly 100% of the time. So it’s no surprise that we love New York.

Here’s how we make the most of a short 2 or 3 day weekend trip.

1. Carefully pick flights. ✈️ Late night Friday or early morning Saturday is going to make the most of our time. We opted for early Saturday so that I could run a late funeral on Friday. We’re an hour from the airport so Friday after work, we drove to a hotel where parking the car was included in our stay and we paid with Marriott points so it was essentially free.

2. Don’t waste a second. ⏱️ Drop your bags at the hotel and immediately strike out again. This is easy to do when your room is not ready, but if you can check-in right away it’s much harder. We like to plan something that forces our hand. A breakfast reservation did the trick this time!

3. Use Chat GPT. 💻 Ok, so this one is new to the scene, but I’m already in love. Ask it for the best 10 restaurants within walking distance of your hotel. Ask it what things in your neighborhood are ‘secret’ or ‘hidden gems.’ Chat GPT will save you hours of zooming around on Google Maps or Apple Maps trying to earmark things to see in the area where you are staying. Ask it more complicated or specific questions and your itinerary will form itself! Or you can literally ask it to make you an itinerary. Amazing.

4. Pack super-duper light. 🧳 Don’t think of it as a ‘trip' think of the weekend as two outfits and a toothbrush. I pinky-promise you can buy anything you need in this life in NY.

5. Look for last-minute show tickets. 🎟️ The traditional way is to get to Times Square at 11:00 AM and stand in line at TKTS (look on the app first to see what’s available and confirm the time), but I’ve also had good luck on resale sites like Ticketmaster and Stubhub. Broadway here I come!

6. Plan ahead or plan as-you-go. 🗺️ It can be helpful to make a custom Apple Map (or any map app) for sites, museums, and restaurants that interest you. As you roam the city you can pull up the map to make sure you aren’t missing something close-by. Or just let the city speak to you—there’s plenty to see and do!