EarthyVeg: EarthyVeg’s THREE CITY ADVENTURE

CITY #1 – NEW YORK CITY

Day One

We arrived at Newark Airport about noon and took the airport train to the parking area to get our courtesy shuttle to our hotel. We decided to stay in Harrison, NJ while visiting NYC. If you want to save some money and don’t mind taking a 20 minute train into NYC from Newark, this is a great place. I was having trouble finding a hotel in NYC under $200 that looked semi decent. I don’t really want to stay at a Hampton Inn for $250 a night. Expensive! While searching on Trip Advisor I found the posting for the Hampton Inn and Suites in Harrison, NJ. They had a free shuttle that would pick you up at the airport and take you anywhere you wanted to go within a couple of miles. Awesome. It is across the Passaic River from Newark Penn Station so all we had to do was take the train into New York Penn Station every day. The hotel was only $150/night. The trip for each of us was $10 roundtrip on NJ Transit. That saved us about $80 a night. How awesome is that. The only slight down side is that you are at the mercy of the shuttle. If it is already busy you might need to wait 15-20 minutes for a pickup. Luckily the few times we had to wait were at the hotel.

The first stop once finally making it into New York City after depositing our bags at the hotel was lunch at Peacefood Café. To say we were hungry was an understatement. I’m surprised that I remembered to take a photo before inhaling it. We were trying not to eat too much so we would be hungry for Candle 79 later that night. We shared a mushroom panini and the chickpea fries. They were both good but the chick pea fries were a little too much. We ate way too much of it!

Peacefood Cafe

Mushroom Panini

Chickpea Fries

After eating lunch we headed over to the New York Public Library. The last couple of trips to New York we forgot to visit this beautiful library. I wasn’t going to miss it this trip so we decided we better take care of it the first day. As you can tell from my photos it is a gorgeous place.

After the library we hung out a little in Bryant Park, walked around Times Square for a bit then headed to Candle 79. Maybe we should have saved Candle 79 for the next day because once we got there I was tired, hot, and not in the mood. We had such a hard time figuring out what to get. Finally we decided on the Angel Nachos (disappointing when you have had Spiral Diner’s, which are amazing), and the stuffed avocado salad (good). The real treat of the evening was the dessert. The menu said it was the Cherry Crumble but since cherry season was ending they replaced them with mixed berries. It was still awesome. I really wanted to order a second one but stopped myself. It is only the first day in NYC. I didn’t want to over indulge too quickly.