My trip to the Big Apple seems like a dream now. Even though our adventure in New York City was only a week ago it’s a whole other world away. I’ve gone from wall street to being walled in during this quarantine period. It’s a very scary time for everyone and it is almost impossible to get away from it. The constant background noise of the coronavirus is no doubt fuelling people’s anxiety. So to take my mind off of it (and hopefully yours too), here’s my adventure in New York City!
“Concrete Jungle where dreams are made of”
Empire State of Mind – Alicia Keys
This was my first trip outside of Europe and oh my god was it something! New York City is incredible. It has so many different landscapes and ambiences. From the busy bright lights of Manhattan to the graffiti outskirts of Brooklyn, it feels like many different worlds within one. I walked through the hipster Soho region and rode the subway underground like a local. New York was both familiar and totally unlike anything I’ve experienced. The food was a difficult one to navigate. First of all, hidden tax and tips are added on at the very end which means things are way more expensive than they seem! Also, does New York know what fruit and vegetables are? My diet became just carbs and meat for the four days. And I’ve never tasted so much sugar in any drink before, my teeth actually hurt! At least we made up for it with the amount of walking we did whilst availing of the beautiful New York weather.
My Favourite Things we did in New York
Brooklyn Bridge
We were so lucky with the weather when we visited this spectacular site in NYC. Walking Brooklyn Bridge felt like it was the height of summer. We started on the Manhattan side, near Wall Street. With the cityscape in our background we probably took well over a hundred photos. Brooklyn was a huge contrast compared to the high rise buildings in the centre of the city. The deeper into Brooklyn we got, the more authentic graffiti side we saw.
MOMA: Museum of Modern Art
There was a store in Soho or Greenwich for the MOMA museum that we just happened to come across. It was like entering a posh IKEA or an expensive Tiger shop. The items for sale in there were so cool that we had to visit the actual Museum. The MOMA was a surprisingly wonderful museum. I really enjoy walking through galleries when abroad. There is so much artwork in the world that my eyes have yet to explore. I was over the moon when I walked into one room in the MOMA to see work by Frida Kahlo. She is one of my favourite artists and to see a piece in real life was surreal. To top things off, there was also the Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh! Can you believe it? I’ve been to his museum in Amsterdam where I’d already seen the Sunflowers. But to also see the Starry Night was amazing.
Top of the Rock at the Rockefeller centre
The views from the top are unreal. Even though it is quite expensive to go up, it is well worth the money to be able to gaze at the city from this perspective. Again, we went a bit mad with all the photos but, sure look it, we were enjoying ourselves.
Central Park
I so wish we had spent more time in central park. It is an enormous natural landscape that stretches far far north and a beautiful contrast to the urban New York. Next time I am adventuring New York, I will definitely dedicate a day to just wandering this park and seeing all the squirrels!
The High Line
This is a walkway raised above the city on what used to be a railway. It stretches north on the west side of Manhattan. We first wandered through Soho and onto Greenwich to see the Friend’s Apartment (spoiler: it’s very anticlimactic). The high line was only short distance from there. It was a gorgeous walkway with lots of artwork, graffiti and gardens to see.
Meeting friends
It was so lovely to meet up with friends who now call New York home. My old housemate grew up nearby so it was a treat for her to show us around some of Brooklyn. We dined at a lovely seafood restaurant and drank at the coolest quirkiest bars I’ve ever seen. The best part was standing on the roof of their house and watching the lights of city sky line in the distance.
Now back to what I do best in quarantine following Serena’s lead ^_^
xoxo, Marian
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