New York City Travel, Food, and Highlights – 2025

A couple of weeks ago, Selene and I took a family trip to New York. We did some cool stuff — some of it, rather touristy perhaps, but cool stuff nonetheless. I was going to show you a few highlights in a Monday update post, but then I ended up with about 280 pictures to go through.

Anyway, it was too much to be part of anything else. So here you go: here are pictures of cool things we did or delicious food that we ate.

Day 1

Arrival and Train Rides

We flew into JFK airport reasonably early in the day, then took the Long Island Rail Road into the city.

As we waited for our train to get to the station, I have a brief meeting with some locals.

Personally, I enjoy train rides. I find them relaxing.

We got off at Grand Central, which is always fun to explore. Here’s the ceiling.

From Grand Central, our intention was to walk to our hotel, but we got tired of lugging our suitcases around. So we cabbed it!

The Nintendo Store

After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we started a slow migration toward the Empire State building… but we weren’t due there until after sunset. Time for plenty of stops along the way… the first of which… was the Nintendo Store.

Super touristy. Very crowded. Do not recommend. Not really sure what all the fuss is about, but hey, I got to see Mario, Luigi, and Link.

There was also a Pikachu, but there were far too many people around to take a picture.

Next, more walking! By this point, we all realized that we hadn’t really eaten much all day, so we stopped and got a hot dog.

Selene maintains that this hot dog was delicious. I, however, believe that we were all just very hungry.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

This is like the second or third time we’ve tried to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I don’t remember what happened before to cause the mission to fail, but we always found the doors locked.

We were very happy to find them unlocked and open this time.

There was actually a wedding service going on. I thought it was interesting that you could just walk in while people were getting married. There was some very beautiful music playing and the pipe organ was epic — you could really feel it in the core of your being.

It’s got crazy ceilings.

New York Public Library

It was getting later in the day, but it still wasn’t dark enough for the nighttime view of the city we were hoping to get at Empire, so there was time for one more stop: The New York Public Library.

The ceiling of the upper floor is painted beautifully. Yes, lots of crazy ceilings in NY.

Okay, call me uninformed if you wish, as I hadn’t been to any sort of physical library in a long time, but I really expected to see books somewhere inside.

“Where can we see some books?” I asked one of the attendants. I really just wanted to experience the smell of old books. You know? Libraries have a smell.

He educated that all of the books are kept underground in Bryant Park — and you have to make a request to have them brought up to you. Go figure.

And with that minor disappointment, it was finally dark enough outside.

The Empire State Building

Is it possible to do anything in New York City that is more touristy than the Empire State building? I don’t think so.

And you obviously have to pose inside of King Kong’s hand.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the view from the observation floor that is fully enclosed by windows.

And here’s a couple of pics from the top where everything is out in the open air.

Aren’t we cute?

Tacombi

By the time we descended back to ground level, we realized we were all very hungry again. On the same block, there’s a little taco place called Tacombi, so we popped in. It was delicious.

I actually got a burrito, but it was still delicious. And the churros are from a Christmas market that was going on in Bryant Park.

Day 2

The second day of our trip started with more walking.

This is a building shaped like a trunk.

Liberty Bagels

Is it legal to visit New York without getting a bagel? I don’t think it should be.

We waited in a giant line at Liberty Bagels. That place is ridiculously packed — and rightfully so, their bagels are delicious and they have an insane selection of cream cheeses.

I got their famous Rainbow Bagel, topped with half blueberry and half strawberry cream cheese. It was really good.

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Central Park

This is probably one of my favorite places in New York. I’d like to go on a warm, Spring day to have a picnic.

And then all of a sudden, a thick fog rolled in and covered the tops of buildings.

And it started to rain. We took shelter in a nearby tunnel as we listened to a street performer play some classical guitar songs.

Then, off to the museum!

The MET Museum

The MET is one of those places where you could literally walk around all day and not be done.

I mean, I frequently search their archives for pictures of ancient stuff to use for the articles that I write, so seeing it in person is always awesome.

Like artwork on amphorae…

Or statues of dudes and carvings of stuff…

And look, it’s Pan! IO Pan!

And I can always get lost in the Ancient Egyptian wing…

They were currently doing an exhibition called “Divine Egypt.”

Yeah, of the nearly 300 photos I took, most of them are from the MET. I could have probably done an entire post just with those pictures.

And we finally got a chance to walk through the instruments section of the museum.

Alright, back to the hotel. It was raining really hard and we all needed a little rest.

Pasta Eater

We wanted to eat pasta, so we went to a place called Pasta Eater. Out of all the many places to eat pasta, however, this one was chosen specifically because they make one of the dishes in a wheel of parmesan cheese.

I’ve never had a bad experience with pasta made inside of a cheese wheel. Have you?

Macy’s

We stopped in at Macy’s flagship store, mostly because I needed a bathroom, but also in hopes that we could recreate some sort of Elf extravaganza by looking at Christmas tree displays through department store windows. There weren’t any decorated windows with trees, unfortunately.

They did have some sort of Christmas village going on in the lower floor, but we arrived 5 minutes after it was shut down and the security guard was very quick to let me know it was closed and that we should all gtfo.

I don’t really understand how a retail store has so many things that it can occupy such a large space. I’ve been in entire shopping malls that are smaller than this one Macy’s store. Capitalism at its finest.

Serendipity 3

Don’t worry. Even though we ate all that pasta earlier, we saved room for dessert.

We stopped into Serendipity 3 without a reservation and were initially told that it would be 45 minutes for a table. After some brief witchcraft, they sat us immediately.

After all, we just wanted to try their famous hot chocolate.

We got the s’mores flavor and it was unexpectedly delightful.

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Pizza

As much as there should be a law against visiting New York without getting a bagel, there should also be one about pizza.

But I don’t care about bagels so much as I do pizza. And it doesn’t matter how much food we’ve already eaten or what time of day it is… if I walk by 20 different places that say “$1.50 Pizza” in neon lights, I’m going to have to go get one sooner or later.

And then it was time for bed.

Day 3

We had to check out of our hotel in the morning, but they held our bags for us so we could continue wandering around the city for a while.

I don’t know what this building is, but I guess I thought it looked cool, so I took a few pictures of it.

Our first stop of the day was a bookstore… uhhh… sorry, but I’m a little light on the details here. It was supposed to be where the filmed the tv show You or something like that. It didn’t catch my interest at all, so I didn’t take any pictures. Also, we sat outside in the rain for about 20 minutes past their scheduled opening time and nobody ever opened the store.

After that, we went to a little underground subway mall to check out some comics.

But the final stop of the day… truly the highlight… perhaps even the coolest part of the entire trip… was sushi.

Shirokuro

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to dine in a 2D comic strip? Maybe in a hand-drawn, black and white world?

Well… that’s basically what this place is.

It was pretty trippy.

But aside from the aesthetics, they also had amazing sushi.

I’ve never really been a sushi person. I’ll eat it, but I’ve never been like, “hey, I really want sushi right now.”

They may have converted me.

Seriously, it was that good.

Heading Home

And that was one of our last stops for the trip. We caught an Uber Airport Shuttle at the Port Authority Bus Station and went for a long drive to LaGuardia Airport.

LaGuardia was recently remodeled, apparently. We were there briefly for our last New York visit and it felt like one small, musty room… and the only food option was a tiny little shop that had some donuts, coffee, and snacks. But now… it’s huge! You basically have to walk through an entire shopping mall before you get to the gates. They even have a giant fountain of water that rains down from the ceiling with color-changing lights.

Once we made it past all the shopping, we were greeted by a large fight status display screen that claimed our return flight was cancelled. We continued to the gate to ask questions — there was nobody there, but the gate status said delayed.

And then it got delayed a little bit longer.

And then a little bit longer…

We eventually did make it back to Florida, however. I think in total we lost about 3 hours from the delays. Very happy it wasn’t a cancellation.