By nimames
The past week was very eventful, to say the least. We had a snow day, the second one in the semester, followed by spending an afternoon playing the snow and rejoicing the simple pleasure of walking around the snow-covered city trying to forget about the cold.
Seeing that Monday was President’s day and for that matter a day off, we decided to took this opportunity and travel to … the city that never sleeps, the Big Apple, New York city. I begrudgingly woke up early in the morning and we headed to the bus station where we took the bus to NYC. Although I am not a morning person, I was excited for the upcoming long weekend because, well I had 5 days off and because in a mere 4 hours, I would be in the notorious, New York City. I had only dreamt of it and although it may seem that I am making a big deal out of vising a city but honestly it WAS a big deal. New York resounds in the minds of every single person in this planet as the city where everything can happen. The city with the beautiful skyline, the skyscrapers, the hot dogs and other food trucks, the Brooklyn Bridge, King Kong’s Empire State Building and so on.
The four days went amazingly well and we managed to visit the MOMA, the National Natural History Museum, Times Square, the Financial Department. We were at the Rockefeller Center in the Top of the Rock where we had a breathtaking panoramic view of the skyline of New York. We had lobster and seafood in the famous Red Lobster, we also spend quite some time strolling in an all-white Central Park. On Saturday we walked through the Brooklyn Bridge while it was heavily snowing. We walked to the Financial District where we got to see Wall Street but also Ground Zero. On Sunday morning, we decided to head downtown to West Village and we ended up walking from Soho to Little Italy and Chinatown. For our final day in New York, last but certainty not least, we decided to take the a ferry that went around the Statue of Liberty, perched in all its green splendor in the middle of the water with the background of Manhattan with its concrete and steel buildings !
Now, New York was certainly a dream come true to me and I would like to talk about some few things that I particularly loved about my stay there.First of all the people. I am constantly amazed at the diversity of ethnicities, languages, cultures there were in DC and in the US overall but NY was something different all together. In fact, it was a true melting pot where you could hear man different (and really I mean many) different languages and dialects. Some of the people were intriguing with their avant garde fashion sense and other were curious and eager to hear about a country as tiny as morocco.Second, the diversity was not constricted to the people only, it was all over. Not a part of the city resembled another one as each had its own characteristics and traits, its own vibe and personality that you could feel when you suddenly and unexpectedly moved from one part to another. From the imposing heights of Manhattan to the frail-looking but beautiful Central Park squeezed between the thousands of tons of concrete that the city was made of. West village and SoHo had a swaggy and Avant-garde feel to them from the colorful and worn-out buildings with the fungus covered staircases to the vintage boutiques and cozy coffee shops nestled between two blocs of brigs. Although SoHo was a tiny bit more chic what with the modern art galleries and the gourmet French and Italian bistros and Irish and English pubs. I particularly loved this part of town especially the vintage posters shops, the handmade jewelry and retailing shops that had a sort of hobo-chic feel to them where each piece was as unique as the other. We walked around for a few blocks and we surprisingly found ourselves in … China Town with all its buzzing life, weird smells and overcrowded streets.
In the end, my experience in NYC was one that I will always remember because it encompasses everything that I love about life: diversity. But it had also allowed me to spend more time with an awesome group of people with whom I had shared so much and looking forward to sharing more memories to come !