I recently was lucky enough to travel to New York as part of a trip with my local culinary college. I had an absolute blast and cannot believe how much I saw and did in just 4 days away! I’ve definitely found my new favourite travel destination and cannot wait visit the USA again soon with my family – I’m planning many more future visits! I had such a brilliant time in New York, I absolutely loved the feel of the city, the sights and of course the food! Over the last week I ticked off many dreams on my bucket list – seeing the Statue of Liberty, going up to the top of the Empire State Building, watching a basketball game at Madison Square Gardens, meeting and visiting Jacques Torres and his chocolate factory and watching Wicked! on Broadway were a few highlights!

Here are some snapshots taken from my trip. I hope you enjoy – I wish I’d brought my camera with me more times – I didn’t get to photograph Central Park and some of the other places we visited, but maybe next time!

Statue of Liberty on our sightseeing boat tour down the Hudson River 

St. Patrick’s Cathedral – on our first full day in New York it was St. Patrick’s Day and it was pretty hectic around 5th Avenue – where the St. Paddy’s Day parade was taking place later in the day. 

Going to the top of the Empire State Building was great fun. I loved seeing the New York skyline! 

The 9/11 memorial museum was a great and overwhelming experience. It was a very heartwarming and emotional visit. 

Washington Park

I saw my first ever basketball game at Madison Square Gardens! We saw the New York Knicks vs the Minnesota Timberwolves. The atmosphere was brilliant and it was great to experience for myself one of America’s national sports.

Times Square – it’s super exhilarating walking around at night, there’s so much going on and lots to see! 

On one of the days my dream came true! We met the legendary Jacques Torres aka “Mr Chocolate” and had the chance to tour his chocolate factory in Brooklyn. Being a self-confessed chocoholic this little factory trip was perfect! We indulged and tasted many treats – we were given little taster pots of roasted almonds dusted with a rich and decadent cocoa powder, Jacques famous chocolate chip cookies (which are absolutely amazing!), we also enjoyed chocolate coated Cheerios and toffee/caramel covered popcorn drizzled with chocolate – my two personal favourite picks!

Being given a tour of the factory by Jacques Torres 

Lots of different Easter chocolate ready to be packaged and sold 

Some of the coolest looking chocolate I’ve ever seen! These hand crafted chocolate fish are simply so creative and delicious!

We were in charge of finding restaurants and places to eat for most days. I loved looking around and tasting new foods as I like to do on most holidays I go on. We had a really early start in the middle of our holiday visiting a New York fish market at 5:00am! After that we had a few moments to go and search out somewhere to eat breakfast before our trip to see the Statue of Liberty. We found this amazing deli selling an array of different cuisines from all over the world and whole foods. This traditional Italian-American sandwich/roll made me really hungry and I really couldn’t wait to try it out. Consisting of crisp salad leaves, the sweetest sliced tomato, smoked ham, salami and mozzarella incased in a crunchy sesame ciabatta-style bun. Incredibly good, great fresh produce and extremely yummy.

(My breakfast and lunch for one day!)

Fresh mozzarella pizza and barbecue chicken pizza 

I ate my fair share of pizza whilst away in NYC – New York is definitely the city for pizza lovers outside of Italy (I could’ve easily swarmed this post with never ending pictures of pizza!…) I’ve always loved American-style pizzas! This pic above is of one my friends pepperoni pizza – it was massive, but he still managed to eat it all!

(Sorry about the quality of this photo! Phone picture of our meal at Bubba Gump Shrimp The restaurant is located in the heart of Times Square with great views of Broadway.) I love a good all-American cheeseburger with fries and this certainly lived up to my expectations. It was smoky, with a lovely flame-grilled flavour, the gooey oozy cheese was a perfect and the fries and dip were seriously so tasty! Definitely going to try to share a burger like this on the blog soon!

Walking past Carlo’s Bake Shop – the queues for his cake and goodies was out the door! Next time I visit a slice of cake will be on the menu for sure!

Some of the goodies I bought back from New York! I’m slightly addicted to that 42 oz bag of M&M’s and the Hershey’s cookies ‘n’ creme chocolate bars AND all the Oreos! (+ don’t forget those amazing Reese’s too!) 🙂  I’ve got many recipes lined up with all these delicious treats! 

The last day was spent shopping on 5th Avenue in Manhattan! One of the best days – it was nice to relax in some retail therapy before the long flight home later that night. Unfortunately, New York was forecast for snow on the Friday we were going home! It was a bitterly cold end to the holiday but we still made the most of it and had fun. I had an absolutely brilliant time and bought back many great gifts and memories home!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading! Have a great weekend guys!