Last Friday, the London-New York flight transported something a little more exciting than usual in the form of my friend CJ who came to stay in the Big Apple for a few days! After a quick catch up over pizza and champagne (because why not?) on Friday night, I whisked her straight to Penelope’s on Saturday morning for the New York institution of brunch. Here we are peeping out through the glasses over my usual order of Nutella French Toast and Feta Scrambled Eggs:

Brunch at Penelope’s

Saturday was a beautiful, cold, crisp day so we wrapped up warm and headed out to make the most of it, taking in all the sights and snapping the occasional (ok, frequent) selfie. I’ll just include a few here….

Grand Central where we had fun at the whispering gallery

Excited to be in a snowy Central Park

Snow covered Literary Walk

American Girl World

And of course, what would a first day in New York be without the breath-taking views from Top of the Rock:

Sunset over New York

This just happened spontaneously, I promise….

Empire State of Mind

In the evening, we headed out for drinks with some of my friends, starting at Wine bar where the waiters will advise you on the slightly daunting wine list and serve you giant glasses accompanied by delicious tapas:

Winebar

And then it was on to one of New York’s famous “speakeasy bars”. This one was called Fig 19 – you walk along on the look out for a bouncer guarding what looks like an empty art gallery on the lower East side, go in and walk round a corner to find a coat check and then enter through an almost invisible white door on a white wall to find a cute prohibition-style bar serving beautiful cocktails. Here’s a sneaky snap I stole from Cynthia (yes that is a stuffed peacock by the mirror!)

Fig 19 Speakeasy

On Sunday morning, we revived ourselves with breakfast at Little Italy and then walked off our pastries facing freezing winds on the Brooklyn Bridge. We did manage to resist the temptation to join the masses and buy a selfie stick and stuck to classic shots instead.

Brooklyn Bridge

I’ve got to give CJ credit for this arty one of the Manhattan skyline:

Brooklyn Bridge

Having worked up an appetite again, we walked back up to Chinatown for some soup dumplings (literally dumplings filled with soup… I was as surprised about this as I’m sure you are!) We couldn’t help but notice these helpful shops along the way just outside the New York detention centre (if you can’t read it, it says “Bail Bonds: Any NYC Jail, Any NYC Bail”) – hopefully I’ll never need to use this new knowledge…

How to get out of jail

Our next stop was the Terra Blues bar on the lower East side for an awesome evening of blues music with Larry Johnson and the Pioneers. If you want an idea of what it was like, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hrcXMq-9M0&spfreload=10

Larry Johnson at Terra Blues

I’ll leave it there for now – look out for part 2 coming soon! On a side note, looks like I’ll be staying here a bit longer so I’ll be able to show you New York in all four seasons!