Because so much happened in my first week in the US, I had to split my week into two seperate posts! If you missed Part 1, check that out here!
This post is going to be about our trip to New York City on August 28. I went with a group of other exchange students from UPenn.
Times Square
After a very early wake up, the bus departed Philly at 7:30am, and around an hour and a half later, we arrived into Times Square – what a great place to start!
It was really strange walking around in Times Square, especially considering that it only took a short bus ride to get there, and not an 18 hour flight. It is weird to be so close to this bustling city.
We didn’t spend very long in Times Square, but I really wanted to go to the M&M shop, where I enjoyed looking (but not eating), the columns of different coloured M&M’s.
Rockefeller Centre
A trip to New York would be incomplete without trying some stable New York food, and so we scouted out a bagel shop which happened to be in the basement of the Rockefeller Centre. The group agreed that they were amongst the best bagels we’d ever tried! I had a plain pumpernickel bagel with bacon which tasted delicious.
Central Park
No trip to New York City would be complete without a visit to Central Park! It was just relaxing and peaceful walking through the park, and taking in the beautiful scenery.
Joe’s Pizzas
Our eating fest didn’t end with bagels! We also wanted to try some New York Style pizza, and to do this, we ventured to Joe’s Pizza. They claim to be the BEST pizza in New York, and whilst I’ll need to do a personal investigation, if there was tastier pizza, I’d love to try it – I actually wouldn’t want to try it, cause I’d eat too much… 🙁
The slices were a few dollars each, but they were massive! A few slices is all you need!
9/11 Tribute Museum
Next, we went to the 9/11 Tribute Museum. It was obviously quite sad as it was dealing with an incredibly tragic incident. The museum was incredibly well done, and each part of the museum was intricately put together to shape the narrative of the tragic events which unfolded in 2001. I would highly recommend visiting it if you are ever in New York City. It was one of the best put together museums I’ve ever been to. My only disappointment was that we got to the museum quite late, and so there wasn’t that much time to look at everything in detail, but herein lies the reality of trying to visit all of New York in one day.
Where each original twin tower lay, they also have large water monuments to memorialise the victims and heroes who lost their lives that fateful day. They were very impressive!
One World Observatory
The final tourist attraction we visited was the One World Observatory. At the time of writing, this tower is the largest in New York, and once paying a hefty fee to get to the top, we had a 360 degree view of New York City. To make the scenery even more pretty, it was sunset.
After visiting the One World Observatory, we headed on the subway back to Times Square, where we caught the 8:30pm bus back to Philly, which thus conlcuded my first week in the US!
It was a roller coaster of a week! Although it started with a lost wallet, it all went up from there!
