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NYC Day 3 – Sanctuary Guest Suites + A Night Out On The Town (pt 1)

NYC Day 3 – Sanctuary Guest Suites + A Night Out On The Town (pt 1)
Kristin

We got up this morning and spent a few hours working on our computers, out of our friend Dan’s place, before checking in over at Sanctuary Guest Suites (SGSs).

This place has become a home away from home. The manager, Mario Cornejo Negron is incredibly kind and our experience at SGSs has been nothing but positive, both times we stayed. We had stayed one night back in September for a Mercy for Animals’ fundraiser event. This time we got to stay a bit longer and it was absolute bliss.

This place is seriously in an awesome location for veg heads. Located in the East Village we were surrounded by vegan (and vegan-friendly) restaurants. I’m talkin’ walking distance to places like Lula’s Sweet Apothecary, Caravan of Dreams, and Pala, to name a few. It’s also just around the corner from a Whole Foods store and a Metro stop. Oh and yes, the street it’s on feels completely safe too. No matter the hour, we never saw super sketchy folks hanging around. And it’s well lit too.

Not only is the location sweet but this place totally rocks in terms of cleanliness and size. We stayed in a total of three different rooms and they were all very well kept. Not to mention ginormous for NYC! Every room had at least two queen sized beds. One room had a futon that folded out into an equally large bed and also had a free washer and dryer. IN THE ROOM! I’m willing to bet most apartments in that area don’t even come with a washer and dryer! ;)

I took a pics with the built-in camera on my phone before we made a mess of it. Look at how gorgeous this place is.

One of the best parts of staying at SGSs is the outdoor juice bar that’s just a few blocks away. It’s called Juicy Lucy’s and I was there almost every morning! :D

One morning we enjoyed some juice and cake slices by Yossi’s – Om nom nom – while relaxing out on the adorable little balcony off of our SGSs room. What a perfect way to start the day. Actually, it was perfect for me but just before we settled into the balcony Ethan bumped one of his shins into the corner of the bed frame. It wasn’t funny at the time but looking back on it now it’s hard not to LOL. Poor E, hopping around on one leg, kinda like this. ;)

vegan juice and cake

After a bit of work we decided to walk over to Caravan of Dreams to check out their brunch menu. Oh yums!! As mentioned in a previous post, this restaurant is 100% vegan and as it turns out, their food is mighty delicious. The vibe is pretty cool too. It’s super down to earth with interesting art on the walls. I liked the servers too. They were consistent in not being around too much (you know what I mean) but just enough to keep our waters filled and to make sure we were all set.

I ordered the Scrambled Tofu (capers and paprika, sauteed mushrooms and leafy greens) and it was incredibly tasty. Every bite popped with flavor and having a tortilla wrap on the side was perfect for creating an edible scoop while adding a nice texture to the overall dish. And yes, I got another freshly pressed juice! I can’t get enough and the veg restaurants in NYC never let me down. Almost every place we went to offered fresh juice. I could get used to this!

Ethan had the Mediterranean Brunch (Spanish rice, seitan, sauteed greens, tomato, ali-oli).

Ethan: So this is how you do Spanish rice right! I am a huge rice fan. When I’m not dining at a restaurant, I am making mounds of brown rice and steamed veggies. I love this stuff. The whole dish was well prepared and the flavors all were complementary, however, I could just eat this rice all day. This brunch item seems to be popular as a quick glance around the room revealed more than a few Mediterranean Brunches. Add fresh squeezed orange juice and organic locally roasted coffee and we’re off!


After Caravan of Dreams we thought it would be a good idea to head to Lula’s Sweet Apothecary. When is it ever a bad idea to go to this amazing all-vegan ice cream joint?! Well, it’s a bad idea if they’re closed. Which they were. Thankfully there was a very nice sign on the door informing us that they had some flavors, just a few blocks away, over at Sustainable NYC (local, organic, fair trade, re-purposed, biodegradable, and alternative energy products).

It turned out to be a great detour because Sustainable NYC rocks and we probably wouldn’t have even known about it otherwise. They have a little cafe within the store, which sells vegan soups, sammys, and of course Lula’s ice cream. Yay! We also found some cool vegan products like homemade soap and Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary t-shirts!

Oh and I got a scoop of Lula’s peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream. IT. WAS. AWESOME! So incredibly peanut buttery, smooth and creamy. I’m droolin’ over here…

vegan ice creamvegan ice cream

I just realized that this post is getting super long and I still have four more places and some new friends to talk about. Eeek! Stay tuned for NYC Day 3 (pt 2). Please and thank you. :)

Comments

  1. JK

    I’m so confused by your blog. The whole ‘About Me’ is just about Kristin, and the early posts were just about Kristin, but then weeks went by without posts and all of the sudden Ethan was involved. Is he coming along for the voyage? Who is he? Did he quit his job too? Did I miss a post “Introducing Ethan”?

    Are you now on the trip or are you still trying to get details sorted out? Should I expect daily posts from now on? Will anyone else be joining you on your voyage?

    I’d love to know more of your plan, at least for the next week or two. I imagine there are lots of places to eat in NYC. Are you there all week? Do you have a list of restaurants you’ll be trying? Maybe you could post a database of restaurants you’ve tried, restaurants you want to try, etc for each city. People could comment on any you’ve missed.

    Also, in the beginning you did interviews with chefs and put detailed info on the menu items and restaurant philosophies and the like. Now you just seem to post pictures. Have you changed what your intentions are?

    I’m really interested in what I think your blog is, or at least was, which is why I have all of these questions.

    Thanks.
    JK

    • Hi JK,

      Thanks so much for reaching out! :) I completely understand what you’re saying and agree that we’ve been a bit all over the place as we get things going.

      To answer your questions – Ethan is a friend who decided to join the trip, a little last minute. So we plan to do a video intro of him to everyone but in the haste to get this show on the road we haven’t done so just yet. He did leave his audio engineering job in Boston but plans to continue similar work through a mobile mixing rig while on the road.

      Yes, we’re on the road but have been spending most of these first few weeks in New England and New York as we were spending time getting the van built out and finishing some prior obligations that were made before the trip. For example, we’re currently in Boston for a friend’s wedding. After the wedding though we’ll be free and clear to truly create our own schedule and timeline. Once this is all sorted out I’ll be updating the “about” page to reflect a more current state as to who we are, where we are, and what we’re about individually and trip-wise.

      Our posts go up about a week after we’ve been to those locations. This is both for safety purposes and because we’re simply behind on the scheduled posts we’d like to write. It takes a few hours per post and, as you pointed out, we’re still struggling with post style. Ethan and I are both contributing as bloggers to the website and we have different writing styles and differ on the type of content as well. We’ve thought that it might be a good idea to keep our individual styles so we can reach a larger audience. We were in NYC for one week. We’re currently writing and posting that experience and will then be posting about the Boston vegan scene (restaurants and vegan stores/entrepreneurs).

      I love your idea of creating a list of restaurants of where we’ve been and plan to go. That was in my original plan but to be honest getting this entire adventure off the ground has been way more work than I anticipated so I’m trying to keep all of the pieces together while also finding time to work my “regular” job so I can pay my student loans and other monthly bills. But I’m definitely going to revisit this and try to reorganize to make this happen. Thanks for the push! :)

      Maine was our very first outing as part of the trip. There were only four all-vegan restaurants in the entire state so we had plenty of time to organize interviews with both restaurant owners, and other vegan business owners. We were also fortunate to connect with the organizer of the vegan meetup in Maine and were therefore able to secure interviews at one of their events as well. Our week in NYC was filled to the brim with scheduled meal times to meet people who had heard about the trip and wanted to grab a meal. There was not too much time to connect with restaurant owners for interviews. However, we did snag a few interviews with some vegan activists and entrepreneurs. We’re in the editing stages of those videos right now. And in terms of the restaurant reviews, we’re still finding our balance with “reviews” versus the overall experience, versus just sharing pics, and/or combining all of these elements.

      Thanks so much for your questions. It’s definitely helping me/us get re-focused and more organized as we move forward. We’re both new to the work-on-the-road lifestyle and hope that we can refine the process and improve the quality of the website as we go.

      I hope that you’ll stay in touch and continue to follow along through the bumpy beginning stages. :)

      All My Best,
      Kristin

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