Central Park, Wicked Broadway Show, Grand Central Station & More {NYC Trip Recap 4 of 5}

We are on Day 4 of 5 of the New York City vacation we took in June/July. If you missed my first post, you can find it HERE. Today’s post will cover an early morning run around the Central Park Loop, an Italian charm bracelet store outing in SoHo, the Wicked Broadway show, dinner afterwards, Times Square and the Grand Central Station. It was a fun and BUSY day!! We will start with the 7 a.m. morning run around the Central Park Loop. Nathan and I LOVE to run, so this was one part of the trip that we were the MOST excited about! It was a little drizzly for our run, so the photos aren’t the best.

Since we got out early, we didn’t have to deal with the horse carriages, crowds, etc. We had wanted to get out at 6 a.m., but there was some significant rain in the area at that time, so we opted to wait an hour and go out at 7 a.m. The rain cooled us off, so the summer heat wasn’t too bad. My running coach had told me that it is like an organized race in the park, because there are so many people out and about in the morning. She was right, there was a ton of people out! We walked to the park, it was only 3.5 blocks from our hotel.

I use Strava for my runs and here is a map of what we ran. Unfortunately, we turned onto Terrace Drive by mistake, so we got a little turned around. The entire loop around the park is 6 miles, but we did 6.19 miles by going down Terrace Drive and then we didn’t make it completely around the park. There was some REALLY neat things to see on Terrace Drive though, so it is worth checking out if you decide to run along it. We got close!! There is a REALLY great blog post that tells you how to run the Central Park Loop and explains what you’ll see along the way and you can find it HERE. It helped me a lot to read this before we went. It also tells you that 99% of the people run the park counter clockwise, so there is a direction you’ll want to run it in once you enter the park.

From Central Park, you can see four iconic twin-towered buildings along Central Park West: The El Dorado, The Majestic, The San Remo, and The Century. These buildings are known for their distinctive Art Deco designs and their contribution to the Upper West Side’s skyline.

We stopped briefly to check out The Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. There is a huge bedrock that goes down into the lake. Such a cool spot!

I took a lot of photos during our run. The photo on the top left is the famous Obelisk and on the right is the outside of the Guggenheim Museum (built by Frank Lloyd Wright).

After our run, we showered, cleaned up and ate breakfast at the hotel. After that, we went on the subway to SoHo to check out a cute little boutique store called Cut and Cropped. Autumn is into Italian Charm Bracelets (can you believe they’re back in style?!) and they are NYC’s largest Italian charm bar and they also have cute clothing, jewelry and accessories. The outside of the store was so cute, I had to get a photo!

They have the charms in gold or silver. We went with silver, because our existing bracelets are already in silver. But, I LOVED the gold charms!!

After the store, we were STARVING and decided to try Piccola Cucina, which was on the same street. They had a lunch special, so we went for it! I got the lasagna and the noodles were homemade and it was delicious. The funny thing is that the restaurant is #1 for ALL NYC restaurants on Trip Advisor and we had NO IDEA until we got home and looked it up. They had professionals photographers at the restaurant when we were there taking photos of the atmosphere and food, which was fun to watch.

Next up was the Wicked Broadway show!! It was phenomenal! When Brian and I had visited NYC almost 9 years ago, we saw Phantom of the Opera. I had a hard time deciding what to see with the teens. Autumn really wanted to see Wicked and Nathan wanted to see Hamilton. We finally decided on Wicked! They both loved it!

In the lobby, they had a great photo opportunity by the clock.

The stage and the Playbill. We went to the 2 p.m. show and then I had dinner booked at a place within walking distance and we went there right after the show. It worked out really well!

I really wanted the dinner after our Broadway show to be special, so I booked La Grande Boucherie, which has a beautiful interior, patio and a delicious French menu! It was everything I was expecting and more! Their oyster bar was so fancy!

I started with a watermelon tomato gazpacho, then ordered the filet mignon au poivre with mashed potatoes. I can’t remember the name of the dessert, but it was DELICIOUS!

After dinner, it was early still so we decided to walk over to Times Square. It was SO crowded!! It is hard to share Times Square with just a photo, but I got some really cool videos of it!

Then our last stop was the Grand Central Station. I’ve always wanted to see it and it was worth the long, hot walk.

That’s a wrap on the fourth day, with one more day to come… stay tuned! I’ll be back on Thursday with a fun outfit post with crochet, scallops and denim. Another 2 post week!