I spent two days in New York City to see shows, catch up with friends, and eat my way around.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Ever since I studied abroad in South Korea in the summer of 2024, I’ve been trying to write blog posts for the little things I do, even if it’s going across town for a fun little day. When I was studying abroad in Busan my Korean teacher would show us these Naver (a Korean search engine) blogs random people would make documenting visiting parks or bakeries, and I loved that energy.

I think the Internet is a cluttered place, so even if no one reads this at the end of the day, it’s a cute little time capsule for as long as we have electricity—or my credit card stops paying for this domain. I recently started a job, at the time of typing this, and I’m finding one of the ways that I’ve continued to stay sane is by going on little side quests here and there.

Today’s blog post comes from an adventure I did because I wanted to go see The Maids Off-Broadway. I really liked Yerin Ha in Season 4 of Bridgerton, and when I had heard she was going to be in The Maids at St. Ann’s Warehouse, I bought tickets the moment they went on sale. From there, I ended up buying more tickets and booking things with friends, leading to this adventure.

It’s also one of my last adventures in the city—I’m going to be temporarily relocating to South Korea for ten months at the end of the summer, which means my many New York City trips are going to come to an end so I can travel South Korea on the weekends.

It’s bittersweet, but I did have a lot of fun this trip. Let’s get into what I did!

New York City is a great place to just exist and eat in — day one was just for that.

After work on a Friday I headed into the city on a Peter Pan Bus, which meant I just ran straight to Brooklyn from Port Authority and passed out at the place I was staying at this time. I woke up at 6 AM on Saturday, did some early morning reading, then headed out at 10 AM to hop on the F train to the Lower East Side.

From there, I headed to Manousheh Grand. It had been on my list for a long time, and I wanted to get the zaa’tar and avocado manousheh. I ordered that, a peach Laziza, and a fattoush. For $17, this was an insane amount of food for me, and I couldn’t even finish it. It was very much worth the money, although the sour flavors started getting to me in the end.

After eating I walked about 25 minutes to Soho, which was opening up and coming alive. I stopped in the Uniqlo and bought four shirts, which was an unexpected purchase—but they were just too cute. I had come to Soho to go to Gu specifically, but I was shocked at how much lower quality their clothes were compared to Uniqlo. It was all synthetics, which I prefer not to buy.

I then hopped on the train downtown to go to Dumbo. I was dying of thirst because of the heat wave we were experiencing, so I stopped inside of Butler on the waterfront for a limeade. I did not really like it, but I sucked it down before going into St. Ann’s Warehouse for my showing of The Maids.

The full review is up on my blog, but I enjoyed this show a lot. I then had to get on the F train from there to head to Woodside, but my friend was running late for dinner, so I stopped in Ngatso Cafe.

It’s a Tibetan cafe I saw in a short film once and wanted to go to. I got the apple passion fruit tea and it was delicious—I want to go back there and try their other drinks. I then walked to meet my friend at The Weekender, which is a Bhutanese restaurant in Woodside.

We ordered three dishes and a butter tea each. I was pleasantly surprised by the spicy salad and pork dish, as well as the butter tea. We chatted over watching the World Cup game, which was tight between Morocco and Brazil.

Around seven we wrapped up and I headed into Midtown for my second show of the day: Proof. That review is also on my blog, but that was just an okay production for me overall. I wasn’t like completely blown away by it. I headed home after that and watched the Knicks win—everyone was screaming when I was walking home, as that’s when they pulled ahead.

Going to a sports game at least once in New York City is worth the experience.

My second day in town I woke up at 6 AM again, but I dozed off until around 8:30. I enjoyed a hot chocolate with who I was staying with, then I lazed around and showed her pictures of my Portugal and Istanbul trips.

Once it hit 11:30, we started getting ready for the day. We decided to go to lunch at a new udon spot near Barclays, which is Muteki Udon. It was a bit expensive (after tax + tip I ended up paying around $32 for what we ordered). The vegetable dumplings were delicious, but I would say the curry udon could definitely be split between two people.

I also adored their dishware, but that’s a want for another time. We left and then wandered into Kith, where my friend ended up buying two pairs of shoes on the spot. Right after we had tickets for the Liberty game at Barclays Center, so we headed into Barclays and I bought a jersey. The sea foam jerseys were so cute!

Before this day I had never been to a basketball game, but this was such a fun experience. I did not know the theatrics of basketball games and all of the performances that go on during the breaks, but they certainly keep people stimulated.

I did, however, have to run back to the apartment, grab my stuff, then sprint to the subway to make my bus home. I made it by two minutes, which was the most stressful experience of my life in the past few months.

When I got home I ate a Happy Meal then passed out—it felt like such a good experience overall, and I can’t wait to go back one more time before going to Korea!

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