Every year in the month of March Gigaom hosts its annual Structure Data conference in New York. It is a great opportunity for me to visit my favorite city and catch up with friends. Every year, I get to the city a day ahead and I stay back a day later. This year, with slightly more freedom and flexibility in my schedule, I decided to spend about eight days in the city. It was a chance to connect with quite a few of my friends.

I ended up visiting many coffee shops on this trip. While my go to cafe in New York is still GroundSupport in Soho (West Broadway and Spring Street.), I found Box Kite in East Village (St. Marks Place and Avenue A) to be exceptionally good. It was a discovery whose credit goes to Matt Buchanan, who just left the technology blogging world to go become editor of The Awl, a New York-based website that wants to fill the void created by the death of alt.weeklies.

Of course, no New York visit is complete with attempts to discover new stores and acquire a handful of things I call, small joys. This time was no different –Osswald NYC (311 West Broadway) is a great place to find obscure and indulgent scents. I walked away with a handful of samples and hopefully in the near future I will return for one of those awesome brands.

Another ritual I observe when traveling to any city anywhere in the world: a visit to the Apple Store. Ironically I have not been to the re-furbished Soho store and it was great to revisit this most awesome store — which was still a functioning post office when I moved from New York to San Francisco, almost 11 years ago.

I hope you enjoy the sights of Big Apple, captured by my iPhone 5s. A more complete record of my trip is being hosted here with more visuals and a tiny video.Take a moment to check it out.