We stayed at The Refinery Hotel on W38th – a boutique-y establishment with one of the best rooftop bars in the city.  It did not disappoint – great view of the Empire State Building!

Also conventiently located to the subway, the Garment district and Times Square.

After a rush hour drive in from Newark, we dumped our bags and headed to dinner at nearby Wine30.  The small plates were top notch.

Ah, the Garment district. I left half of my suitcase empty specifically for taking home treasures from this textile paradise. We stopped into Mood Fabrics and B&J Fabrics; both are several floors of more fabric than I’ve ever seen in a single establishment.  And let’s not even talk about the trims, notions and speciality items.  I’d carefully recorded patterns and yardage requirements in the Notes app on my phone so I confidently shopped the aisles and aisles of tempting fabrics.

The last stop, Akn Fabrics, was a 5th floor room FULL of African wax print. All in 6yd or 12yd cuts, piled at least four feet high with less than 2 feet between rows serving as an “aisle”.  It was everything the bloggers said it would be. It took a bit of effort to find, but worth the experience.

A while back we saw a documentary on Scott Wiener, his NY pizza tour business and Guinness World Record collection of pizza boxes. Anyone who has followed even one our our trips on this blog knows that we love pizza and seek it out world wide.  So, booking a few hours with Scott’s Pizza Tour while visiting NYC was a no brainer.  We had a blast with Miriam and Lonny, our pizza guides, walking to 3 pizzerias to sample the classic margarita pie.  Super fun, and tasty!

The Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, had an exhibit on the color pink and its role in fashion. So cool to see pieces from iconic designers spanning decades … all in shades of pink!

NYC delivered on the urban art front – I probably have over 50 pictures of street art ranging from stickers on mailboxes to multi-story facades.

Wandering the city, we walked through Little Italy, straight into the Feast of San Gennaro.  Part street fair, part food court, part carnival – the festival was wall-to-wall stalls and people. Just coming off our pizza tour, we were too stuffed to take in all that the food carts had to offer, but we did sample gelato and cannoli.

I’ve heard good things about the Williamsburg area, so I was looking forward to our trip to Rouge Trade NYC.  Riding the subway on the weekend is interesting – some of the regular lines don’t run so you have to figure out which ones are running, and how to get across town using them.  After walking into an empty Bryant Park station and wondering what was up, a helpful metro employee rattled off the alternate route we’d need to take to Williamsburg on a Saturday.

Rough Trade was super-cool and Jeff found some interesting records. The staffer at the checkout counter let us know about a record fair going on nearby.  After hiking out to several other stories on Jeff’s list, we made our way back to the record fair on the way to the subway.  Part record fair, part food truck fair, we grabbed some lunch as well as a few vinyl gems.