Busy Girl's Guide to New York

Last weekend I took a trip to New York with my beautiful bestie, Kelsey.

We had a great time and savored every New York minute.

With every experience, comes lessons learned, so here are some of the lessons that I learned while in New York.

1) Always, always wear comfortable shoes. Don't go for the cuteness factor. I thought it would be cool to wear these cute little booties our first day there. WORST IDEA EVER. My feet STILL hurt.

2) Carry a portable charger with you. Because there are so many people in the city and 100,000's of them are using their phone you're phone can die pretty quickly. It's always good to have a backup! My phone never died while we were out, but Kelsey's did. 

3) Pick up a paper map of the subway system. Yeah, they've got apps for it, but they forget to tell you that you have no service when you're underground. And the subway system is the most confusing thing I have ever seen. It's good to have a map in front of you to reference. 

4) Brooklyn has good beer. Kelsey and I are beer lovers so we knew the one thing that we wanted to do was visit the Brooklyn Brewery. We had so much fun and the beer was delicious. You must go if you get a chance. 

5) Take a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. They have a walking path that is perfect for running, walking, and taking in the beauty of New York. I highly suggest taking a walk on it.

6) Everything is expensive in New York. Cab rides, coffee, water, alcohol, food. EVERYTHING. Even salads were more than some entrees at a few of the restaurants that we went to. A $12 glass of wine? What? I budgeted about $200, including cab fare, anything that I wanted to buy, and food. And thankfully I was able to keep just under that. Expect to spend money and lots of it when you're in the city. 

7) Have an idea of what you want to do before you go. Kelsey started a GoogleDoc before we went and we jotted down all the places that we wanted to go. And to be honest, we pretty much did everything that we wanted to do.

8) Use Yelp. When we were figuring out where we wanted to eat for each meal, it was really helpful for Kelsey to look at Yelp. It tells you what kind of restaurants are around you and how much money you'll have to spend. 

9) Order Tickets beforehand. If you want to see a Broadway Show or go to a taping of a show, get your tickets before you go. They do sell cheap tickets beforehand, but you have to wait for hours in line and you're not even guaranteed a ticket. Kelsey and I thought about going to get tickets for SNL, but we didn't want to waste time to do that when we weren't even guaranteed a ticket anyway. 

10) Have a great time. New York is huge and there's no way to do everything in one day. Take your time. Figure out where you want to go and go do it. New York is an incredible city and has so much to offer so take advantage of it!