Amy's Blog

Although I was feeling a bit of a let down knowing that my birthday month was coming to an end, I was excited for my start to September.

My cousin, Ellen, lives in Kent, Ohio and has two children that attend school at Columbia University in New York City.  She invited me to fly up to Ohio and hop in the car with her and her daughter so that we could take her daughter back to school for her senior year.  I would then drive back with Ellen and get to spend some time with their family (gram’s brother, Bob, and his kids and grandkids) back in Ohio.

Long story short it didn’t work out for me to fly to Ohio, but I was able to fly into NYC and meet them in the city.  I flew out of Kansas City at 9:20 am and flew to Charlotte where I had an hour layover….just enough time to grab a sandwich, a vodka soda, and catch a bit of the Penn State Ohio football game.  I LOVE the new Penn State jerseys…but I digress.  I caught my connecting flight to Newark, NJ.

The day before I left, I surfed around online and talked to my cousin about the best way to get to the city from Newark.  We determined that it would be best to take the airport train to the New Jersey Transit System train to Penn Station and then catch the subway to Columbia where I would meet my cousins.  I travel alone frequently, so I don’t normally get nervous, but I will admit that I was nervous and a little intimidated at the thought of making this trip, my first trip ever to New York City.

With the help of the airport attendant, I found the airport train to the NJ transit.  While on the platform waiting on the NJ Transit train, this guy struck up a conversation with me.  He was super nice, heading to the city on business from Houston.  We chatted while waiting for the train and even sat near each other.  I thought, wow, he is kind of cute, really nice, and super friendly.  He even offered to help me with my bag, and that is when I noticed the wedding ring! Ha.

Anyway, I sat next to a New Yorker that helped me and Houston guy find our way around at Penn Station.  From there, I bought a metro card and slowly but surely figured out how to catch the subway.  Two hours from landing at Newark, I made it to the Columbia campus.

I was in awe of the beauty that was Columbia with its old buildings and well manicured campus.  Seeing the hustle and bustle of the students moving in made me miss college.  I was also a little intimidated by being in the presence of so many Ivy Leaguers.  I know that there is no way that I could have hacked it at an Ivy League.  I got to see my cousin Elan’s dorm and then we headed out for our first New York City adventure.

We took the subway to Times Square where my senses were overloaded with the mass marketing and commercialization.  Every chain known to man was represented and I saw ads for every TV show to air this fall.  Everyone there is out to make or spend a buck.  The most interesting thing were all of the people that were in character to try and scam money from people by posing for pictures.  Super Mario was there but he creeped me out because he was a middle eastern guy that kept taking off his head and walking around with a scowl on his face….way to scare the children!

We walked to Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and several other places in the area before heading to dinner at a local Mexican/Columbian restaurant.

I also got to attend Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  The only thing besides the construction that bothered me was the fact that they let tourists mill around the cathedral during Mass.  I thought that was distracting and disrespectful.  After Mass, we had my favorite meal, brunch, at a little French cafe before heading off for Soho.

Soho was my favorite part of the city that I saw during my trip.  I really wanted to go into Ivanka Trump’s store, but it was closed for remodeling.  I also discovered Frye’s leather while in town and I’m still regretting not buying the purple sneakers in the Converse store.

As we were walking back to the Subway, we saw several people stopped out in front of this store taking pictures and there were lines everywhere inside.  We thought that there may be someone famous, but we couldn’t figure it out.  The name of the store was called Dash, so I pulled out my phone and googled “Dash, Soho, NYC” and a million hits popped up.  Kim Kardashian owns the store.  Enough said.

We walked down to the financial district and I snapped some pictures of Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.  The entire time I walked around the city I kept saying, I can’t believe I’m in NYC! I don’t know why I’ve never been before.

We also went to Battery Park and caught a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty before we headed to dinner at a mom and pop greek restaurant near Columbia University.

We did a TON of walking on the trip, so all of the eating didn’t phase me.  The only disappointment that I had was that we did not run into any famous people!

I had a lot of firsts on this trip and am already making a list of the things that I would like to do when I go back to the city, which I hope is very soon.