Hi everyone and welcome back to another “Being a Tourist In:…” post! I was going to wait to write about this trip since I’ve been sharing so much about traveling lately, but I just couldn’t wait! Brooklyn is, by far, the most incredible place I’ve ever traveled to and I can’t wait to share what I got to see when I visited a few weekends ago!
Starting off with the basics, my house is only about two and a half hours away from Brooklyn, so one of my friends from JMU and I decided to drive to the city from my house. We used a parking service called Parking Panda to reserve a spot in a parking garage before we left the house so we didn’t have to stress about finding parking or having to pay an astronomical amount!
We ended up getting there around 11 o’clock in the morning and made the walk from the parking garage to the hotel to check-in before our day really began. We stayed at the NU Hotel, which is in the Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn. The hotel was more hole-in-the-wall and discreet than I expected but that just made it even better! The lobby was bustling with people of all ages and the aesthetic was everything my 19 year old self could dream of.
After checking in, we headed to our main destination, DUMBO. To get there, instead of walking through normal streets, we headed all the way to the water and walked along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade which has an AMAZING view of the Manhattan skyline. It stretched almost our entire walk from the hotel to DUMBO and it got us even more excited for our fun weekend!
The view opposite of the Manhattan skyline along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade!
After making it to DUMBO, we stopped at Shake Shack for a quick bite to eat. It was my first time there and I will definitely be going back the next chance I get. So yummy! From there, we headed to the view that was at the top of our list: the Manhattan Bridge at the intersection of Washington and Water Street. Oh my goodness. This was my favorite thing we did the entire trip and it’s also a pretty familiar view if you’re a Gossip Girl fan! So cool!
From there, we pretty much just walked around and explored! We didn’t realize how close together everything was going to be, so we hit our main destinations in only a couple hours. Another favorite spot of ours was the Jane’s Carousel area! While we were walking around there, we actually saw Youtuber Tess Christine and her boyfriend at breakfast at the Atrium.
Continuing to walk around that area, we stumbled upon some cute little shops such as the West Elm Market. I’d never heard of West Elm having a market-type store so we checked it out and it was adorable! Lots of fun, Brooklyn-inspired trinkets and souvenirs, but not in a cheesy way! Way to go, West Elm!
Next, we made our way over to a set of stairs that lead to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across the whole thing! It wasn’t that bad of a walk, but, of course, the fact that it was a beautiful day didn’t hurt. 🙂 This was one of my favorite memories because we got to see a lot of Brooklyn, a lot of Manhattan, and a lot of the river all at one time! I definitely recommend doing this if you’re visiting the city.
One really cool thing (at least to me) that we did while we were in Brooklyn was use a real map. I always use Google Maps on my phone to help me get place to place and using a paper map allowed us to see some really pretty areas that we might not have seen if we had been using our phones. It was a refreshing feeling (and allowed for a cool photo op!).
After running around all day, we were pretty exhausted so we headed back to the hotel around 8. Since we’d seen all that we came to see, we decided to just sleep in and treat ourselves to some brunch the next day!
For brunch, we went to a little French place called Cafe Lucuc, which was only a short walk from the NU Hotel. We were seated very quickly and had delicious pancakes and french toast! After eating, we headed back to the hotel to check-out and make the walk from the hotel to our parking garage.
Of course, I had to snap a little OOTD before leaving!
Even though we saw all that we wanted to see, it was still an awful feeling to be leaving such an exciting and wonderful place. I will definitely be trying to make another day trip before I head back to college in August and can’t wait to see what the next trip entails!
Thank you for reading what very well may be my longest post to date, but what can I say? Brooklyn stole my heart. Feel free to leave any Brooklyn suggestions in the comments for when I go back again! See you next week!
We love the Brooklyn Heights/DUMBO area, it will definitely steal your heart! Little bit of fun trivia: Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lived there, and that’s where Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 🙂 Next time you’re there be sure to have pizza at Juliana’s (the original Grimaldi’s), and visit Jacques Torres for some amazing chocolate treats! Fun post!