We decided to do a “mini-moon” to Philadelphia and New York City in early November, instead of taking our full on honeymoon right away. This was primarily due to not having enough PTO to take as long of a “relaxing” honeymoon as we’d like, as well as us finding cheap flights to Philly. Using @minneapolisflightdeals (@thriftytraveler if you’re outside of MN), we purchased $75 round trip tickets from MSP to Philly, costing us $150 total. Being as I’m a huge Eagles fan and have never been to a game at Lincoln Financial Field, we jumped on the deal and planned our trip from there! Taylor bought tickets to the Eagles/Bears game for my birthday, and the rest is history.

Day 1 (Saturday – 1st Day in Philly)

We left MSP and landed in Philly around 10:30am on Saturday. We booked an AirBNB for our stay and were thankfully able to check-in upon our arrival. Our first stop after dropping our bags off was to find some food! We went to Jim’s Steaks on South Street. Shame on me for not being a sandwich fan, but Taylor got a classic Philly Cheesesteak. We were surprised that one of the cheese options was “cheese whiz”, but after Tay ordered American cheese on his sandwich, we realized that the real Philly way is to get cheese whiz! Who would have thought.

We walked around the city quite a bit and eventually made our way over to Malbec Argentine Steakhouse. Taylor’s brother and sister-in-law gave us a gift card there as our wedding gift! So fun and such a unique idea. It was extremely laid back and beautiful, with fantastic service. Maybe most importantly, our food was delicious! We loved being able to treat ourselves to a “nice” meal since that is something that we have not chosen to spend our money on often. Wine, appetizers, and our main course… definitely would recommend!

The Airbnb we booked for our two nights in Philly ended up working out well and serving its purpose. It was very tiny, our queen bed taking up almost the entire bedroom. We basically just slept there, so we didn’t need a whole lot more space than that. It was also a short Lyft ride to Lincoln Financial Field!

Day 2 (Sunday – 2nd Day in Philly)

EAGLES GAME DAY! I feel like I had been waiting for this day for a long time. Our first time seeing the Eagles play at Lincoln Financial Field. The day was an absolute dream, including the Eagles beating the Bears!

We took a Lyft from our airBNB to the Wells Fargo Complex which houses the Philly sports complexes, as well as the Xfinity Live! Bar. We splurged a bit on the Green Legion tailgate, which included 4 hours of unlimited beer, mimosas, bloody Mary’s, and food! Definitely worth it. We ate and drank well beyond our money’s worth! Philly proved that they are a city that knows how to tailgate.

We went in to the stadium about an hour before kickoff and were able to do all the fun first-time activities like taking pictures with the statues and getting our faces painted.

The Eagles won! It was a great game. We watched the rest of the football games at Xfinity Live! Since our tailgating admission earlier in the day included the cover charge for the bar. They have so many screens and a crazy fun atmosphere.

Day 3 (Monday – 1st Day in NYC)

We took the MegaBus from Philly to NYC on Monday morning. I spent a little bit extra ($4) to reserve our seats on the bus and turns out it was totally worth it! Prior to our trip I had some reservations about riding the MegaBus as there seems to be a lot of horror stories out there. Our ride went off without a hitch and from our experience would definitely recommend riding with them for extremely reasonable priced travel.

My best friend Chelsea lived in New York for a few years during graduate school and recommended that we download the Citymapper App for our time in the city. Oh. My. Goodness. This app was a total godsend! You enter the location you want to get to and then it breaks down all the possible modes of transportation and their cost and time. You can see if the subway would be faster or cheaper than a lyft or the bus. It also breaks down step by step instructions for getting to say, the subway station, and then how many stops before you should get off, as well as all the steps afterwards. It’s AMAZING!

This day we did quite a bit of walking around Central Park. There were so many people there who had ran the NYC Marathon the day prior, it was fun to see folks with their medals!

For our time in New York we chose to “splurge” AKA we budgeted and made decisions accordingly, on a fantastic hotel. We stayed at the Concorde Hotel New York. It was beautiful and near many popular destinations.

That night we went to Black Tap where we split one of their delicious massive milkshakes and some fries. Splitting food is a great way to be able to try new foods, keep prices down, and not get so full you wanna puke.

Day 4 (Tuesday – 2nd Day in NYC)

We got HELLA steps in on Tuesday! Our first stop was Katz’ Deli in the Lower East Side. I’m not a huge fan of pastrami, but Taylor got their famous Pastrami Hot Sandwich. He said it was delicious, and from the bite I had, it was! Katz’ Deli is where the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene from “When Harry Met Sally” took place. We also beat the lunch rush when we stopped in which was a huge plus, as the deli is extremely popular!

We decided to walk the Brooklyn Bridge this day, which is probably where all our steps came from J The bridge and the views were absolutely beautiful! On the other side of the bridge we found a place for a quick lunch/afternoon snack, Front Street Pizza in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. Y’all this was my favorite food stop of our whole trip!! Their pizza is incredible. Their pasta is delicious. They have amazing bread. 10/10 would move to Brooklyn so I could be a regular here.

Wednesday afternoon/evening we went to see the taping of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert at the Ed Sullivan Theater. We reserved our tickets through 1iota, which allows you to book tickets for tapings of shows all across the country! We were lucky enough to get “preferred” tickets instead of general, guaranteeing us entry and seats for the show. We ended up getting to sit in the third row! It was a blast.

Day 5 (Wednesday – 3rd Day in NYC)

At the advice of a friend, we purchased tickets for Top View Sightseeing on Groupon for a significant discount. Top View Sightseeing offers bus tours (on double decker buses) through Uptown, Downtown, all over NYC. We struggled a bit with getting our Groupon converted into an actual ticket, resulting in us walking a good two miles or so extra. The Groupon isn’t very clear, but you need to meet with a supervisor or go to their main office in order to get the Groupon converted into a ticket. Once we got on the bus it was a great and easy way to get around. Our pass for 24 hours, hop-on-hop-off, meaning we could get on and off at whatever stop we liked along the route.

We took the tour bus to Harlem. We walked around the neighborhood and decided on Red Rooster for lunch. It was delicious and definitely lived up to the hype of their online reviews. Taylor wanted to get his hair cut so we wandered around looking for a barber. We settled on one in East Harlem and while Tay got his hard cut, I went on a search for a coffee shop nearby. East Harlem was the least tourist filled neighborhood that we visited during our trip and was filled with many local shops and unique street vendors.

Wednesday night we headed to Greenwich Village to try and catch a show at the Comedy Cellar! Tickets sell out early but you can reserve your seats ahead of time on their website. We didn’t get there quite early enough for a show at the original Comedy Cellar but were excited to learn that they opened a second location right around the corner, “Comedy Cellar at the Village Underground”. We were able to get last-minute tickets to a show there! Tickets were only $14 a person but we were a little blindsided by the two drink/item minimum per person during the show. It was a great experience though and even if we would have known about the minimum, we likely would still have went!

One big takeaway from this day was how difficult it can be to find a bathroom in NYC unless you want to purchase something. We learned the hard way that the best bet is to try and use the bathroom even if you don’t feel like you have to… it felt like we were little kids again!

Day 6 (Thursday – 4th Day in NYC)

This was our slow morning! We spent time re-packing our things before checking out of our hotel. We stored our luggage at the hotel so we weren’t stuck dragging it around the city all day.

We walked around the 9/11 Memorial but didn’t go into the museum because $. Turns out they have free admission on Tuesday evenings from 5-10pm, we will keep this in mind for future trips! J We also walked around Wall Street and took photos (I took photos… ha!) in front of the New York Stock Exchange. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t overly chaotic when we were there, which was surprising to me.

Before we hopped on the MegaBus to head back to Philly, we stopped at a Krispy Kreme!!! Krispy Kreme donuts are probably my favorite food ever and there are no longer any locations in MN L I was particularly thrilled to find out that there was a storefront inside of Penn Station, which wasn’t too far from where we were at the time. A bit of Googling let to the knowledge that Krispy Kreme has plans to open a giant store in Times Square that will have the world’s largest “Hot Light”, so you can be sure to stop in when the donuts are fresh! Definitely need to plan a trip back to NYC for this alone ;)

We took the MegaBus back to Philly and checked into our hotel for the night. Again about the MegaBus, DEFINITELY worth the extra few bucks to reserve your seats! Both of our trips our buses have been packed, yet we were able to sit together due to our $4 reserved seats.

We stayed at Microtel Inn & Suites near the Philadelphia Airport for our last night. It wasn’t anything special compared to our time at the Concorde, but it was a pretty cheap stay so overall worth it.

Day 7 (Friday – Philly & Home)

We took the shuttle from our hotel to the airport… and began our journey back to Minnesota!

PRO TIP!

One thing we both wanted to do while in NYC was see a Broadway show! They are quite expensive, so we decided that we would enter the ticket lotteries and if we won then we would go. I entered the lotteries the day before each show and used the Broadway Direct Website. While we didn’t win any of the ticket lotteries, it was cool to gain experience and understanding of lotteries so that we can enter them in the future! There are so many awesome shows all across the country!

Also…

BUDGET for your honeymoon (and all other large expenses) so that you feel confident and good about spending money! We didn’t spend recklessly on our trip, but we did have money saved so that we COULD make purchases that we wouldn’t normally make. Spending should feel good and it can if you prepare!

Breakdown of our DREAM Mini-moon in Philly/NYC