We met in Dublin in 2006. Our summer study abroad was supposed to be a line on a transcript, and instead it turned into 20 years. June 2026 was the anniversary of two decades of knowing each other, and it was also the month Lauren left New York, the last of us to go. So we booked the Ritz-Carlton NoMad, because after years of watching the group thin out one lease at a time, it felt wrong to mark the end of it over drinks at the Astoria local.

Twenty years is bad apartments and worse boyfriends. It’s marriages (and divorces), and children, and cross-country moves. It is also, somehow, the same three girls from a Dublin dorm. That’s what we came to celebrate, and what we came to mourn, in the same weekend. Then the city handed us something none of us could have planned for.

View south over Manhattan from the 36th floor of the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, on a clear day with scattered cloud. Wooden water towers and rooftops of NoMad and the Flatiron District fill the foreground, giving way to the Lower Manhattan skyline with One World Trade Center at its center, and Jersey City visible across the Hudson at right.

Looking down Manhattan from the 36th-floor Club Lounge, with One World Trade Center on the horizon and the water towers of NoMad and the Flatiron District in the foreground.

(Meagan Drillinger)The Hotel

The Ritz-Carlton NoMad opened in July 2022 at 25 W 28th Street, just off Broadway on the northern edge of Madison Square Park, and it goes up 50 floors, which makes it one of the tallest things in the neighborhood. I didn’t know until this weekend that we’d picked the Floral District, or that these blocks are Tin Pan Alley, where American popular music had an unofficial birth. There’s something almost unbearably on-the-nose about spending your last New York Weekend in the place where the songs about New York started. The hotel knows it, as the whole design brief leans on the flower market, so you get floral motifs threaded through the vertical lines and grid geometry, nature and the city arguing politely with each other.

The lobby rocks muted pink velvet, a fabric chandelier, a tiled staircase, and a run of live hydrangeas down the length of the bar. There’s real art on the walls — Ross Blecker and Donald Baechler throughout, a Pat Steir in the public space. It’s warmer than I expected. I had braced for the marble-and-hush version of a Ritz-Carlton and got something closer to a very well-curated living room.

We were in a Madison Club Suite on the 36th floor, and I’d push anyone booking here to spend whatever it costs to get high up. The building’s whole argument is the view. On a clear day, it runs from the Empire State Building all the way down to the Statue of Liberty. Our corner suite looked south and east. The rooms themselves are deliberately understated with a neutral palette so that nothing competes with the windows. Diptyque in the bathroom is a nice touch.

If you can stretch to Club Level, do. The Club Lounge is on 36 with a 180-degree sweep down the island, and the food runs continuously through the day under Jose Andres, who, unusually, oversees every single thing you can eat or drink in this building, room service included.

Our Place

We didn’t eat every meal at the hotel, because we couldn’t. Twenty years in, you have a place, and ours is Supper on East 2nd between A and B. Our standing order is always the chicken parm, a pasta to share, and an unreasonable amount of wine. The owners don’t know us, but we have walked through these for us 22-year-olds and then as 30-somethings, and now as women with careers and children to get back to. And still, the staff treats us like family. Our glasses are aggressively never empty. I’d like the record to show that this is the restaurant’s fault and not ours.

The Empire State Building at night, its upper floors and spire floodlit in Knicks blue and orange, seen from street level looking north through NoMad. A red traffic light and a green street sign frame the left of the shot, with lit office windows, storefronts and summer trees along the block below.

The Empire State Building lit in blue and orange for the Knicks’ first championship since 1973, seen from the Floral District a few blocks from The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad.

(Meagan Drillinger)Saturday

We had no plan beyond dinner. The Knicks were in San Antonio for Game 5, up 3-1, and none of us said out loud that they might actually close it out because, at the time, none of us really cared about basketball. We watched it in Bazaar Bar, crammed in with what a crowd of people that, very likely, were also non-basketball fans who were also getting swept up in the frenetic magic of New York energy. When Brunson finished with 45 and the final settled at 94-90, the building stopped being a hotel. You could hear Broadway explode with horns and the deafening roar of 53 years of patience. We went outside and stood in it. The Garden is a 15-minute walk from the front door, and the crowd began to move like a slow-flowing river in that direction. Kids climbed traffic light towers and scaffolding. It was a sea of iPhones in the air as we all collectively took in this moment for our city.

I have thought about it a lot since. A city that waited 53 years to get something back, on the weekend three women marked 20 years of not losing each other. I know that’s a stretch, but in the moment it felt like everything.

Bathroom of a Club Level suite at the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad. A white freestanding soaking tub with matte black floor-mounted fixtures sits beside a floor-to-ceiling window looking south over Manhattan rooftops toward One World Trade Center. Speckled dark terrazzo covers the floor and walls, with a Carrara marble vanity and vessel sink at right, folded towels on a shelf below, and a white orchid on the ledge.

A freestanding soaking tub set against floor-to-ceiling glass in a Club Level suite at The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, looking south over Lower Manhattan to One World Trade Center.

(Meagan Drillinger)Everything Else Worth Knowing

There’s more food at the Ritz-Carlton, NoMAd than you’d expect. Zaytinya on the ground floor is the one I’d send you to first. This 140-seat room is brushed in bronze and white oak, with pops of Mediterranean blue, and serves mezze pulled from Turkish, Greek, and Lebanese cooking.

Bazaar Meat is the theatrical option, with large-cut, wood-fired meats and a “Tasting through Japan” menu where Wagyu and Kobe are cooked on hot Ishiyaki stone and finished in front of you.

Bazaar Bar is the sleeper pick, with its library vibes and deep banquettes. And Nubeluz on the roof is the reason half of New York walks through the lobby. They’re chasing 270 degrees of skyline, a Martin Brudnizki jewel box of mirrors and heavy fabric. Book it, dress for it, go for sunset. Be warned it’s open to non-guests, so it’s a scene rather than a sanctuary.

We didn’t use the spa properly, which I regret. It’s 6,800 square feet with eight treatment rooms, plus a separate sauna and steam. The Method facial is done with scents built around the flower district downstairs. The gym is open 24 hours.

Rates start around $895 in low season and climb hard from there. You’re paying New York prices for a New York view, and you should make sure you actually get the view. Book high, book Club Level if you can, and give Nubeluz an early reservation.

Three women in sunglasses smiling in a close selfie in front of a wall covered in wheatpasted posters and graffiti.

Twenty years after meeting on an NYU study abroad program in Dublin, back in New York for one last weekend together.

(Meagan Drillinger)

For me, I can’t separate the hotel from that weekend anymore. We came to say goodbye to a city on behalf of a friend group that scattered years ago, 20 Junes after a summer in Dublin, and the city picks that exact weekend to win something it had waited five decades for.

We all flew out Monday. Our New York chapter may be over, but we have a group chat, a standing table at Supper, and 20 years of evidence that New York really is forever.