Times Square, New York City 2015 Travel Diary

DAY ONE

My mom decided on a whim that she wanted to take a trip to New York City for her birthday and Thanksgiving week. I hadn't visited the Big Apple since I last covered NYFW in September 2013, and was beyond thrilled that I would get to return with my mom and brother, and during the Autumn season.
Although I knew it was going to be a bit chillier than I'm accustomed to in Southern California, I couldn't wait to experience an actual Fall season with the amber and caramel colored leaves and colder air. I also have visited New York only during the blistering cold and snowy weather or when it's ridiculously humid out, and was thrilled that this would be somewhat of a happy medium (I also want to visit during the Spring).

HOTEL

We stayed at the Wellington Hotel in midtown which was a couple blocks down the street from Times Square, making it easy to get to that tourist attraction and other points of interest such as Central Park (4-minute walk), The Modern Museum of Art (7-minute walk) and Rockefeller Center (9-minute walk). Our hotel has a long history that spans the last 113 years, and you can see it in the opulent furnishings and art deco artwork around the hotel lobby.
We were excited to have been upgraded to a suite, so each of us received our own bed (2 Queens and 1 Twin), and there was a refrigerator and microwave, but only 1 restroom to share among us. It happened to be located in the room with two beds that I shared with my brother, so my mother felt bad coming in and out in the middle of the night.
We stayed for 5 nights, the first couple evenings were rough as we wanted to keep the room toasty to stay warm, but it seemed that whenever we used the heater, the steam pipes that heat the room would rattle all through the night. I probably got the worst sleep the first evening. There's not really anything you or the hotel can do about the horrendous pipe rattling and banging noise since the hotel runs off of steam pipes. The last few nights, we were able to stay warm without having to turn on the heat so that eliminated the terrible sounds.

DINING

The first evening we arrived around 7pm, checked in and dropped off our things at our hotel, and went straight to Times Square (it's pretty hard to miss from right outside our hotel). We took photos of the lights and took in all of the bright energy before heading to dinner at TSQ Brasserie. The restaurant doesn't currently have the best reviews, but that wasn't something we were aware of when we dined there. My mom and brother each ordered chicken noodle soup, and my brother an additional plate of sliders. I had a Mediterranean platter; all in all we thought are food was good and server attentiveness was present, but our experience as a whole wasn't spectacular or anything. We were just glad to be able to get food in our bellies.

TRANSPORTATION

Afterwards we shopped around Times Square since the stores stay open late. We also got our 7-day unlimited metro cards, which allowed us to ride the subways and buses for an unlimited number of swipes during a full 7-day period. This is great because we could make use of the value in 5 days; it was $32 total, $1 for a new metro card and $31 for the rides (it used to be $29!), which I believe meant we had to ride 11 times to make the amount worth it. Most places that we wanted to visit in the following days were within walking distance, but this unlimited metro card really came in handy when there were subway transfers or much longer distances involved. I used the Transit App to route all of our destinations and I really liked the ease of use and functionality. We didn't take a taxi once while we were there except to get to and from the airport.