New York City

This past summer I went to New York City to look at colleges. I drove with my dad over two days to the city where we would stay for 3 nights. I knew my friend, Sarah, would be in New York City over the summer, so I made plans to meet her there which I was very much looking forward to. On the drive I saw on Instagram that my friend from Berlin, Reagan, who I hadn’t seen in a year, was also in New York, so I quickly contacted her to make plans to meet her too.

We arrived to New York on a Friday evening and stayed in a hotel close to Columbia University, as the next morning we had a information session and campus tour planned there. I really liked Columbia and had a very fun time visiting the campus. After this college visit, my dad and I walked to Central Park to meet Sarah. We then walked around Central Park for a bit, since it was a little cooler in the park than the city, which was absolutely boiling. We then met my friend Reagan from Berlin, as she was also in Central Park at that time. It was really fun catching up with her, but she soon had to go to a museum with her family. We then said good-bye to my dad, who was going to spend the day around Central Park. Sarah and I walked through the Upper East Side and had Blair’s (from Gossip Girl) favorite macarons at Ladurée. We then took a Lyft to Chelsea Market, where we ate at a really good French restaurant where we had the best fries of our life (they had rosemary and some really good sea salt on them). After walking through Chelsea Market, we went up to the High Line, which is a park made out of converted subway tracks, which we walked through for a bit. We took really pretty pictures on the High Line, as the sun was just starting to set at this point. After the High Line, we walked to Times Square where we met my dad. We walked to Rockefeller Center and then realized our feet hurt really bad so we got an Uber, dropped off Sarah at her place, and then drove back to our hotel.

The next day I stuck with my dad, so he didn’t feel lonesome in NYC. We started the morning off with bagels with cream cheese and lox. We then took the subway to the Washington Square Arch, where everyone was out, playing music, and walking around as it was a Sunday. There was a market set up, so we got some lemonades there as it was still extremely hot out. After Washington Square, we walked to a place that I had seen on Instagram which I really wanted to go to called Milk Bar, which has cereal-milk flavored ice cream. It was great. After this I dragged my dad to the Glossier Showroom, which was a really cool store where I spent way too much money. After this we went to another place I had seen on Instagram called Cha Cha Matcha, where I got a matcha flavored latte. We then walked through Little Italy a bit and had cannoli, which rivaled the ones found in Italy. After this we went to the Tenement Museum, which my dad remembered from when he visited friends in New York 20 years ago. There we did a tour focused on a family of Irish immigrants, as my dad is Boston-Irish and therefore found this very interesting. Though it was way too hot to be sitting in non-air-conditioned tenements, we still learned some pretty interesting things. After this we were hungry and walked past the Flatiron building to a deli on 2^ndAve called 2^ndAve Deli, where we had pastrami sandwiches. After dinner, we decided on a whim to go to the top of the Empire State Building (hello Gossip Girl again!), which we reached just in time for the sunset after waiting in line for way too long. Though it was really cool and the view was absolutely incredible, the crowds were insane making us decide that this was a one-in-a-lifetime thing. 

 

The next morning, we had another college visit at Barnard. I also found Barnard to be very interesting and it had such a pretty campus. After the Barnard visit, we got lunch at Shake Shack where we had burgers and milkshakes and took them to the Columbia campus to eat. After eating lunch, we unfortunately had to leave New York and drive to Boston to visit my grandparents.