The city: I love being able to walk places and I love the public transportation. The streets are indeed dirty and it's waaaay too cold for being the middle of October. There's so much to do and so much to see and SO MUCH TO EAT. Which brings me to my next topic.

The food: Being in California is great. There's just as much food variety here as there is in New York. What I think is great about NYC is that all that food is so close together. It's all concentrated into a few square miles of culinary goodness! And you don't have to drive to or from any of it (yay for taxis and the metro!) so you can drink as much as you want at all these awesome restaurants!

The people: There are seriously so many different people all crammed together in one city. I feel like Southern California is so spread out that you don't get all that diversity in one place.

The shopping: I was kind of disappointed, actually =\ I think that I'd actually have to live in New York to really appreciate all the retail opportunities of the city.

I am so glad...

I had my Blackberry: No seriously. Looking up places on the fly? Priceless.

We got unlimited Metro cards: For seven days at least, which was perfect for us. I think we got our $25 worth.

We stayed where we did: Hilton Garden Inn Times Square. A decently sized hotel room with free internet access. Prices were reasonable enough. Location was convenient enough. All worked out fine.

What we loved

Pop Burger: VV loved this place. He loved it even more than the fancy meals we had during the week.

Sarita's Mac and Cheese: VV reallly loved this. He's such a mac and cheese fiend.

L'Ecole: Food prepared by students at the French Culinary Institute. Good deal for good food! I really liked it here!

Shake Shack: We both loved this place like you wouldn't believe. I swear it was one of the best burgers I'd ever had in my life. I have much love for In-n-Out, but I think Shake Shack is even better!

Fat Cat: We went here with Huntz and Charlene after meeting up with them for dinner at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown. They have live music, pool tables, ping pong, shuffleboard, scrabble, chess, etc. Good call, Huntz!

Avenue Q: Xin was right, I loved this :D