A day in the life: NYC Edition

     I thought this trip was going to be a fucking nightmare. My friend Colby’s 20th birthday was coming

up on 12/04 and his one birthday wish was to go to New York City. Not that he’s never been, he actually

could be considered a local the way he knows his way around the streets, he just wanted to spend the day

with his favorite people in his favorite place. We then started to plan our agenda. 

Colby, our bestfriend Jackie, my boyfriend Kevin and I, all seeing what day works best for us throughout our busy lives. We decided on Saturday 12/02. Jackie had church Sunday morning so we decided let’s make this a day trip. After deciding we wanted to make this a day trip we decided to leave as early as possible in order to have the most amount of time there. We planned on leaving at 3:30 a.m on Saturday morning in our car, in anticipation of getting there around 8:00 or 9:00am. We then started brainstorming ideas for a vague idea of what we were going to spend and how much we needed to save. Our final consensus came to Summit at Vanderbilt, the Balloon Museum, the Sex Museum, a day of shopping, then to be finished off by dinner at Carmine's in Times Square. After dinner we would head over to the Rockefeller Center to see the tree after it was just lit for the season, the day before on December 1st. 

December 1st rolls around and just as we're finalizing our plans, our friend Jackie cancels because she's worried that she will make it back in time for church on Sunday but be exhausted the entire time. We don't let this bother us. Instead, we invite my 16 year old sister Ashley, who is also close with all of us. We then looked up the tickets to Summit at Vanderbilt just to see them all booked. There goes another plan down the drain. Now I know you may be thinking, Kaylin why did you wait till the day before to book these tickets?  I'm a procrastinator, what can I say? If we got the tickets great. If we didn't, there's always something else to do, which there was. We ended up getting tickets to the edge which is another tall building with an amazing view over New York City.

We get on the road at around 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Now don't ask me anything about the car ride because I slept the entire time.  All I know is that we arrived around 10:00 and I woke up to them making me call and book a hotel because at this point we realized we don't need to come home that night because all of us were free Sunday morning so we decided to book stay the night. 

After arriving, we met up with my friend Natalia (Nat Bae) and her boyfriend Hugo from New Jersey, at the hotel we just booked 10 minutes ago to drop our bags and the car off. After settling in, we head towards The Edge for our reservation at 12:30. Outside The Edge, there's a mall so we did a little shopping, exploring, and catching up in the meantime. We head into The Edge and it was incredible. I loved every second being up there so much that I didn't even want to leave. They had food and other attractions upstairs but I didn't pay any mind to them as I was so focused on how beautiful of the view there was outside with the glass walls and the glass floor. We got some great photo ops and just loved seeing the view of the city. 

 When we all started to get hungry we agreed that, what kind of a New York experience  would it be without Dollar Pizza? Then we all started walking 15 minutes to “TwoBros Dollar Pizza.” Honestly the place looked like it hasn't been cleaned in months but we ended up staying to give them the benefit of the doubt. The ground and the walls were filthy, the workers were touching the food without washing their hands, and overall it just did not seem like a place that the health department would have approved of. I saw a sign on the door that said “two slices + a can of soda for $4.” I mean bargain am I right?  So that's exactly what I order, two slices and a can of soda.  After reading the “CASH ONLY” sign, I pull out $4 from my wallet just for the worker to tell me my order came to $7. Ya know inflation is a bitch, but whatever I give him the $7 and go eat my pizza. Despite my Hunger, I ate a slice and a half because I physically couldn't finish one of them. Now I'm not the type to waste food but I don't think anyone would have wanted to eat this. 

After our group all ate the definition of a literal stomach ache, we 

hopped in a Uber and drove towards Soho so Colby could go on a 

little birthday splurge. We walked by designer stores, regular 

people stores and people selling things on the sidewalk because 

who doesn’t like shopping? Colby ended up buying a hat and a 

shirt from Amiri, totaling to $800 but the shirt was 50% off so 

what a steal! We went through stores like sephora, forever 21, 

Dior, but the only thing my broke ass bought was a $10, see-

through, “I<3NY” t-shirt. I thought it was a cute and classic 

tourist thing to buy.

At around 5:30 we Ubered back over to the hotel to get ready for our dinner reservations at Carmine’s for 7:15. I threw some curls in my hair, put on my puffa jacket, and we start walking 15 minutes into Times Square for dinner. We arrived to the fancy Italian restaurant with a line out the door, and get seated right away as we were right on time. We ordered the Caesar salad, Penne Alla Vodka, and the Lasagna which all came in family size plates for all of us to each get a bite of  everything. Carmine's is Colby and I's favorite place to get dinner as the food is phenomenal and we've eaten there multiple times so the food lived up to our expectations.  I then whispered to the waiter to see if he could bring a birthday dessert around so we could sing for Colby which we did before leaving. 

 We then headed to Rockefeller Center to see the tree just to be met with maybe a thousand fucking people who were all surrounding it making it hard to breathe never mind even walk through, but that still didn't make it any less beautiful.

It might sound corny but it felt so much like the Christmas magic

that they show in Hallmark movies. After seeing the hype of the 

tree, we walked around Times Square going in tourist shops, 

watching street performers, taking lots and lots of pictures, and 

just soaking in the city while we could. Any normal person would 

probably get lost in the streets of New York City but having Colby 

with us helped. It was almost like he studied a map of New York 

City on his free time. The crowd was full of slow walkers but all I 

could think about was how everybody in the crowd had their own 

individual lives, feelings, and thoughts. I don't know why but I always think that whenever I see large 

groups of people because sometimes I tend to imagine them all as the background characters in a GTA 

Lobby.

 After my feet were killing me from wearing new Air Force One’s all day and trying not to crease them, we walked back 15 minutes to the hotel to go to sleep in anticipation for the 5-hour drive home the next day.  Now, yes, we did book a hotel but there was four of us and we booked one room with one queen bed and the hotel room was probably the size of a large dog crate. The two princesses, Ashley and Colby took the bed while me and Kevin volunteered to take the floor. The room was so small that I slept on the sliver of floor to the left of the bed and Kevin slept on the sliver of the floor at the foot of the bed. It was so small we couldn't even lay side by side on the floor together but I didn't complain after what a great day we just had and honestly I was so tired I could sleep anywhere at that point.

 After anticipating a shitty trip, and many of our original plans not following through, it actually ended up being more fun than we had all expected.

The Edge

Dollar Pizza

Carmines