In December 2014, I graduated from college. I also went back to New York City for the third time. This time, we were better prepared. We planned out each day based on where the things we wanted to do were located. Since we had done most of the touristy things, we were able to avoid most of the crush of tourists since we were going so close to Christmas.
We left as soon as my graduation was over to catch a 1:30 p.m. flight out of the New Orleans airport. We got there a little over an hour before the flight left and made it through security about 20 minutes before we had to board. We grabbed a quick lunch and got on the plane. Ironically, we were also flying out with my graduation speaker.
We landed later that evening and took the train from Newark to Penn Station and then stood in the cold to catch a taxi to bring us to our hotel. We may have packed better, but we were still wearing Louisiana clothes that first night. We dropped our luggage and the went out to find dinner. We ended up at Frank’s Pizza, stood at a highboy table and scarfed down two of the biggest slices of pizza that we had ever eaten.
The next morning, we got up early and walked to the Empire State Building. The view was super foggy that morning, so we didn’t get any good pictures. When we got down to the ground again, it was snowing. We left the Empire and headed over to Bryant Park to do some shopping at the Christmas Market. It is still one of our favorite things to do in the winter when we visit New York. That night, we went to see Matilda on Broadway.
On our next day, we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Radio City, and the 9/11 Memorial Museum. We ate at Serendipity that night, which has now become a tradition for us when we’re in the city.
The last full day, went to the Met and up to see Columbia University. In the midst of all of our wandering, we also wound up doing a lot of shopping, something we hadn’t been able to do on our first trip.
I’m sure there are a ton of other things we did that I can’t remember now, but that’s usually how most trips go. While we were there, I kept a printed itinerary of what each day would look like in a glittery pink folder. Each night, we marked off the things we had done, and made sure if we missed something we dropped it down to the next day. For the things we had tickets for, I printed them out and put them in the other side of the folder in order of days and times of visits. If we were going to the Empire in the morning, it was the first ticket in the stack for that day. I kept each day together with a paper clip, so each morning, all I had to do was pull out the paper clip for that day and put it in my bag. As I’ve planned other trips, I make sure to keep that folder with us. It keeps us organized, and it also makes keeping important papers like tickets and maps together in one place.
Keep wandering friends.
Wandering While Writing 