Wawa (Parsippany, NJ)
350 New RoadWelp, my New York adventure was over and it was time to drive home.
I drove to New York by myself and met my co-worker there. She had just returned from another long road trip and wanted an extra day to do some laundry and just relax. She found a late afternoon flight to Newark and opted for that instead of getting in the car with me early in the morning for an 11 drive to NYC.
She was supposed to come home with me but since our trip was cut a couple days short, she opted to stay in New York and fly home later. She had friends and family there and wanted to take advantage of being in the area.
That meant another 11 hour car ride solo. And I was perfectly fine with that. I found a bunch of pro wrestling podcasts with interviews of guys from the Attitude Era and listened to them the whole way home.
The last time I had filled up my tank was in Youngstown, OH on the way to New York. I had a little over 100 miles left in the tank and decided to get out of the city before I stopped.
My plan was to pull off at the first Wawa I saw so I could also grab something tasty for breakfast.
My GPS took me a little different route than when I came in. I ended up on I-95 to I-280 to I-80 instead of taking US-3 to US-46 to I-80.
The first Wawa I came across was just before I-280 got to I-80 in Parsippany, NJ. The gas station was right off the highway at the New Road exit. It was a little confusing to get in to though. Both entrances directly in to the gas station said “Do Not Enter.” I was from the eastbound lane. I went down the road a little bit to an office building to turn around but they had signs directing you through the parking into a back entrance for the Wawa/
Read more…Berlina Cafe
600 8th AvenueA lot of times when I travel for work, I really have to plan out my post work meal. In a lot of cities, there isn’t much open that I can grab quickly and head back to my hotel.
That’s not the case in New York City.
We got back to our hotel on 39th Street near 8th Avenue around 11:30 PM. We still had some work to do so we found a table in the breakfast area off the lobby. My coworker grabbed the laptop from me so she could do what she needed to do first. I asked if it’d be OK if I went and got something to eat while she was working.
I think I’ve mentioned this before. There. Are. So. Many. Options. for pizza in New York. I kept seeing people walking around with boxes from Joe’s Pizza on Broadway. I thought, that’s a pretty famous place. I should go there.
I started walking towards Broadway. It was only a ten minute walk but ultimately, I was exhausted and didn’t feel like walking that far at 11:30 at night. I turned around and headed back towards 8th Avenue where there were still plenty of options.
I ended up picking Berlina Cafe on the corner of 8th Avenue and 39th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District. The restaurant is the corner spot on the northeast corner. A couple of years ago, this spot was a Starbucks…now it’s a pizza joint also serving up sandwiches, burgers, salads, and breakfast.
Read more…Madison Square Garden
4 Pennsylvania Plaza- New York, NY 10001
- (212) 465-6741
- Website
I’m not gonna lie. When I found out part of my trip to New York would include going to Madison Square Garden, I was pumped.
I grew up during the 90’s when the Chicago Bulls were the best team in basketball. Being an hour from Chicago, everyone was a Bulls fan. Everyone loved Michael Jordan. That’s just the way things were in my small, rural farming community. We gathered at night in someone’s driveway or at the basketball courts at the city park and all pretended we were the Bulls.
The Bulls biggest rival during that era was the New York Knicks. We hated the Knicks. I remember throwing my walkman at the wall after the Knicks won Game 2 of the 1993 NBA Eastern Conference Finals at the Garden when John Starks dunked over Michael Jordan sealing a Knicks victory and giving the Knicks a 2-0 lead in the series (more on that later). It was well after my bedtime and I wasn’t supposed to be listening to the game…I gave myself away when the walkman bounced off the wall scaring the crap out of my parents who were sleeping right below me.
Everyone has a MSG story. We’ve all watched several events that have happened there. I’ve watched dozens of WWF/E matches on TV originating from the Garden…always wishing I was there in person…and I finally got my chance to check out “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
The current Madison Square Garden is the fourth arena in New York City to bear this name. It stands between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan between 31st and 33rd Streets. It stands above Penn Station in Midtown. When the Garden was built in the 1960’s, the above ground portions of Penn Station were demolished. The trains still run underneath the Garden and there are entrances right next to the arena entrances. There was so much foot traffic going to the trains and to the Moynihan Train Hall across the street, it was really hard to see who was there for the event at the Garden and who was just going home.
Lazzaro (8th Avenue)
520 8th AvenueOur second full day in New York was going to be pretty top heavy in to the evening. I pulled the black out curtain all the way down in my hotel room and slept until about 10:30
I finally got out of bed and got moving a little after 11. We didn’t have to be to our first job site until around 4:00 but I had some things I needed to do on my own. I was waiting for my co-worker to send me something so I could finish some preparations for our early evening assignment.
I got an e-mail from her around noon with what I needed. I looked at my weather app and saw it was going to start raining soon. I decided to go grab a sandwich before it rained then get started on my afternoon work.
We were walking back from a job assignment near Madison Square Garden the night before. There was a sign for a restaurant that caught my eye. I decided to walk back there for lunch.
Lazzaro is on 8th Avenue near West 36th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District. The restaurant is fairly new and is part of a larger development project in the building. This space used to be a restaurant called Roast Kitchen and the concept looks fairly similar to that restaurant. This is one of two Lazzaro’s in New York City. The other is in the Financial District on Trinity Place.
Read more…2 Bros Pizza (Times Square)
557 8th AvenueMore pizza.
Night 2 in New York City took a pause around 7:00. My colleague and I had a lot to do during the day and actually still had a few things to do once we got back to the hotel.
I finished up what I needed to do then headed out for dinner. I wanted to stop at a souvenir store to grab some shirts for my kids so I headed south on 8th Avenue from 39th Street because I saw a place to get crappy, overpriced t-shirts on my walk back to the hotel.
I got the souvenir’s out of the way and noticed a pizza place a little further down 8th Street. I was in the pizza mood again so I just kept walking. It wasn’t that far away and there were quite a few people crowded around it which made me think it was a good place to stop.
2 Bros Pizza is another one of those places that has several locations in New York City. The one I stopped at is on 8th Avenue and 38th Street. The website calls this their “Times Square” location but other businesses in the area call it the Garment District. There are 7 locations in all with one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn.
Read more…Burger Mania
274 W. 40th StreetSo I wasn’t only going to eat pizza while I was in New York. I could have though. There were enough pizza places around that I could have eaten pizza for every meal and never went to the same place twice.
Our first day in town was a little hectic. We had an assignment about 5 blocks from our hotel in the morning. Then we had to get my car out of the parking garage and drive to Queens for an after assignment. Then we were back in Midtown for an evening assignment before calling it a day.
We were really worried going from Midtown to Queens and back was going to eat up a lot of our day but we actually got back to the hotel with about three hours to spare. I put the car back into the (very expensive) parking ramp then we both went back to our rooms to relax for a little bit before the evening assignment.
It was around 2:30 and I was getting pretty hungry. The great thing about where we were staying was that it took longer to get an elevator at the hotel than it did to walk some place to get something to eat.
I was planning on pizza for dinner again so I looked at Google maps to see if there was anything else in the area. I saw a burger place about a block away and thought burgers sounded good so I headed that way.
Burger Mania is on 40th Street east of 8th Avenue in Manhattan. The small burger joint between a pizza place and an eyebrow threading spot looks to have went in to this spot just off the corner sometime in 2021. Before that, it was a small cafe.
Read more…Upside Pizza (Garment District)
598 8th AvenueI love it when I get to travel to work. I’ve gotten to take some pretty cool trips over the years. Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, DC…but when I got asked to make the trip to New York, that took the top spot as coolest trip.
I decided to drive. I know…that’s a long drive. The company offered to fly me, but I have a lot of gear that needs to go with me. If that drive is within about 12 hours, I usually opt to roll down my windows, find a couple of podcasts, and take a nice, relaxing road trip.
I left Kalamazoo around 10 AM. I was able to get there with only three stops. One for lunch at a Sbarro on the Ohio Turnpike. One for gas at a Sheetz (I didn’t get food here, but no worries, I stopped at a different Sheetz on the way home and will get to that blog later) near Youngstown. Finally a stop to pee at a rest area near Snow Shoe, PA. I hit the Lincoln Tunnel around 8 PM and got settled in my hotel near the corner of 39th Street and 8th Avenue by 8:30.
I hadn’t eaten since that Sbarro stop around 1 PM. I wasn’t worried though. I was heading to New York…and I knew there would be a thousand places to choose from well in to the night.
It seriously isn’t hard to find a pizza place in Manhattan. I walked out of my hotel and there were at least six of them that I could see and I’m sure more just around the corner. I walked straight to 8th Avenue from 39th Street and there was a place on either corner across the very busy street. I ended up picking the one southeast corner this night but I’d get to the other one later in the week.
Upside Pizza has four locations in New York City. Three are in Manhattan, the fourth is in Brooklyn. The location in the Garment District is the one that’s open really late..until at least midnight five days a week with a closing time of 3 AM Friday and Saturday. The small corner pizza shop moved in sometime in 2019 where it took over for a fried chicken joint that had been there at least a decade.
Read more…Sbarro (Commodore Perry Travel Plaza)
888 N. County Road 260Buckle up. You’re about to inundated with pizza blogs.
I got sent to New York City for work last week. When the trip was first brought up, my bosses told me to get with my travel partner and work out flight details. I have a lot of gear when I travel and I hate flying with it. I have done it several times in the past and it’s a ton of stress.
So I asked if I could drive.
Yes, I would rather make an 11 drive by myself than fly with what I need for work. I told them to let the co-worker I was traveling with fly and I would meet her there.
I had a doctor’s appointment at 9 AM the day I was scheduled to leave and I didn’t really want to cancel. That took about an hour then I got on the road around 10 AM and started heading east.
I didn’t want to stop more than I needed to so I pushed back lunch for a while knowing I would hit some travel plazas on the Ohio Turnpike. I got to about halfway between Toledo and Cleveland before I couldn’t push it off anymore and I needed to get something to eat.
I chose the Sbarro at the Commodore Perry Travel Plaza outside of Clyde, Ohio on the Ohio Turnpike. This is the service area on I-80 at mile marker 100 in Sandusky County. I love these turnpike travel plazas. They’re so much better than the non-toll road rest areas. There is always a gas station, bathrooms, vending machines, some kind of convenience store and of course, a food court.
Read more…Bruegger’s Bagels (East Lansing)
505 E. Grand River AvenueAaaand, we’re back. It’s competition season for figure skating again. L is starting her second season by moving up a level and competing in the National Solo Dance Series. By this time next year, we will likely have a second kid competing. The boy is just itching to get out there. His time is coming soon.
The first competition of the year for L’s coach was the Van Camp Invitational in East Lansing. We did this one last year but L was still in the basic skills categories. We only had to go on Saturday. This year, she’s moved up to Excel series in free skate and she’s competing in NSD.
The dance portion of these competitions is usually during the week. In this case, L would be competing in four events on Friday and one on Saturday.
I took the day off because I was excited to see her skating in Solo Dance. When I said I was taking the day off, my parents decided to drive up from Illinois. They would be able to see her skate in three of the four events and they would also get to see her do the dance competition for the first time.
L’s day was pretty packed between practices and events. There was about an hour around lunch time that I could leave the rink and go get food. I watched her skate in her first of two Solo Dance events then took my parents to go pick up lunch for all of us.
L is kind of a picky eater. When she’s nervous, she carb loads. A bagel with cream cheese is about the best thing I could get for her so I went to a bagel place.
Bruegger’s Bagels is a chain of about 200 restaurants founded in Troy, NY in the early 80’s. There are six locations in Michigan with the East Lansing spot the closest to Southwest Michigan.
The restaurant is near the corner of East Grand River Avenue and Division Street in downtown East Lansing. We were kind of in a hurry and hoping to find a close parking spot but East Lansing was nuts that weekend. It was St. Patrick’s Day and the kids were already out day drinking. We had to settle for the ramp on Division Street and walk back to the restaurant.
Read more…TNT – Lil’ Brother’s BBQ
1622 Bloomfield AvenueI’ve picking up some overtime shifts recently. We don’t always get the opportunity and I could really use the extra work right now so I’ve been volunteering when the opportunity comes up.
The shifts usually work where I work my regular 9-5 with my co-worker then I take on an extra 3-4 hours doing something by myself. I wrap things up with my co-worker then try to grab a quick dinner and start the extra hours.
I was heading to the southside of Kalamazoo one day last week and had a little over an hour before I needed to be where I was going. There’s a familiar BBQ that opened up not too far from my job site so I headed straight to get some tips.
TNT – Lil’ Brother’s BBQ should be a familiar name if you’ve been around Kalamazoo. They’ve had several locations over the years. The first time I visited them, they were on North Westnedge. Then they were at Burdick Hair and Beauty Supply before that building was shut down. They moved over to the Eastside at the corner of Riverview and Bridge Street. Now, they’re in a small shop in the Milwood Neighborhood on Bloomfield Avenue near Portage Street. It’s in the same building as the Milwood Quick Stop and Rocket Comics but it’s around the corner on the Bloomfield Avenue side. This part of the building used to be Lyman’s Lighting & Accessories.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 