New York City - New York

I actually visited New York City on two separate days when during my time in the States. The first day was in mid July whilst I was on one of my days off during my 9 week assignment at Camp Pocono Trails.

Round 1: 18/07/2018

Today was my first time out of Pennsylvania where me, Marcin, Clare and Adriana had the same day off decided to go to NYC for the day. The car drive took us about 1 hr 30 minutes. However we took a quick pit stop in Starbucks for a coffee and a muffin.

We then hit the road again and parked at Monte Claire Heights railway station to ride a train to New York Penn Station.

We arrived into New York at 12 noon, leaving Penn Station we were able to see the Empire State Building. We walked for about 15 minutes to get to times square. It was huge and there were so many things going on. Plenty of selfies and pictures were taken with each other of our time here as it is one of the most iconic places in America.

Stardust Diner:

This was apparently a surprise for me and Marcin by the girls. It was a traditional american diner that was located down Broadway. the waiters and waitresses who work at the diner had to audition to work there as they were singers with dreams to sing and perform on Broadway. It was definitely an experience to remember. One of the waiters started singing Teenage Dream by Katy Perry and he looked at me and took my hat off my head and ran downstairs and was dancing around the diner. I did eventually receive my hat back but it was definitely unexpected. The food was also amazing, Me and the other male counsellor had chocolate milk after so long. I ate pulled pork chicken burgers and fries.

Chinatown:

Chinatown was how I imagined it to be, tacky and full of people selling tat along with lots of souvenir shops selling more things that people don’t generally need that all says “I Love NYC” etc. There were however a few nice little side streets which had nice bars and overhead bunting and lights of flowers.

Sugar Factory:

This place was awesome! When you walked through the doors, it was like a small shop with stacks of tubes of candy. But then you walk past the sweets and it’s basically just a traditional restaurant. We all bought ourselves a drink which was basically made out of candy. But it was almost a gallon of drink full of sugar.

World Trade Union Centre / 9/11 Memorial:

We caught the subway tube from Chinatown to the closest tube station to where the 9/11 memorial and the Union World Trade Center was located.

Round 2 - 11/09/2018 - 14/09/2018

I met up with my friend Joe from University in Manchester and we had a great catch up talking about life and comparing and exchanging experiences and stories whilst working at summer camp.

We found a nice little outdoor cafe just outside of Central Park where we both had a burger and chips. We then decided to head over to Brooklyn and walk over Brooklyn bridge as we thought we may be able to get a better ciew of the Statue of Liberty. We got onto the water taxi to take us across the river but the weather was so foggy and grey that it was hard to even see past part of the bridge.

We then hopped back onto the water taxi and headed towards Central Park but then it started to rain. We ended up just finding a bowling alley and went bowling for 2 hours to stay out of the rain.