Spring Break in NYC: Introduction

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Note: All the events described in this entry occurred back in March 2011. For more updated trips and entries please refer back to this blog at a later date. An updated trip or entry will NOT include a note like this. Thanks and enjoy!





It had been five years since I had taken any sort of "vacation." Yes, I had gone back to Florida for Christmas vacation and Spring Break, and in July 2009 I moved to Dorchester, MA. During those first two months, I did visit many of Boston's sites, which I do plan to discuss in future entries because since I still live in the area. However, I have made Massachusetts my home for now, so even though living here has captivated my imagination like Dijon and Aix-en-Provence and satisfied my wunderlust spirit to a certain point, I still lamented for the type of vacation where I could just pick a destination on the map, travel there and explore. I missed taking Spring Breaks in Spain, weekend trips to Paris, Christmases in Nice and how I so wanted to do that again! However, I did feel hope that at least I would be able to do some US travel because of my relocation to the Northeast and here's why. Growing up in Florida, we drove everywhere. For example, my parents would drive me to Naples which was an hour away, twice a week for violin lessons, youth orchestra and also grocery shopping and maybe a visit to the doctor/dentist/eye doctor. During my college years in South Carolina, my city, Rock Hill, was so spread out that I either had to rely on carpooling with friends or eventually I had to drive everywhere (I had a car with me starting Fall 2007/Spring 2008 school year). Now that I live in the Boston area, I rely heavily on public transportation, and people commute from the surrounding area either using bus, train or the commuter rail system. There's a company called Zipcar, which allows one to rent a car hourly if they need it for $7! Hostels can also be found in the major cities in the Northeast, while in the Southeast they are non existant. You can find lovely Bed and Breakfasts (for example the East Main Guesthouse in Rock Hill, SC has lovely owners who keep this beautiful early 20th century home), but hostels are just considered vulgar I guess. Therefore, traveling outside of Massachusetts was potentially cheaper because of public transportation, hostels and the heavy commuting culture of the Northeast. However I kept on putting off trips because I had just started graduate school and I spent most of my time studying and writing papers.



This changed during the Spring 2011 semester, however because of extemporaneous circumstances. Over the years, I have acquired a lot of friends who live in New York City. One of them in particular, was a friend of mine I had met while I was a student at Winthrop University and living in South Carolina. Her name was Bineta, a recent immigrant from Senegal, who was living in Spanish Harlem with her two-year-old daughter and husband. I also had a second friend, who Bianca, a New York City native whom I had met while studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence in Spring 2007 (for more information on our relationship in Aix, please refer to my blog entry entitled "A Typical Day In My Life in Aix-en-Provence) who had invited me five years earlier to come in visit her and she likewise. Unfortunately, we had put our agreement to reunite off for a while because of school and Bianca remained in France for an extra year and a half, living in the Normandy region and then in Paris. We kept in contact all of this time, and finally flirted with the idea of reuniting even more once I moved to Boston. My friend, Bineta, had moved up to New York City from Rock Hill once she became pregnant with her daughter. We briefly lost contact, however in the summer of 2010 we finally resumed communication. She was also excited to hear of my relocationt to Boston and invited me to visit New York and stay with her. I had a third friend that I had known from my youth in Florida (she had studied violin with the same teacher) who was now studying art history at Merrimont Manhatten around the same period. Unfortunately she moved back to Florida after graduation in December 2010, however the desire to see Bineta and Bianca again became for me a very strong reason why to visit New York.



But of course even if I wasn't so lucky to have friends in New York City I had always wanted to go. I grew up watching movies that took place in New York, and also operas on PBS filmed live from the Metropolitan Opera House. My grandmother also used to tell stories of when she and her sisters used to go into New York City to attend concerts and go dancing at local hotels during the 1940s when her family was living in Jersey City. Nonetheless, I also had a nostalgic appeal to New York, in addition to an artistic interest because I had always dreamed of seeing an opera at the Met, and also to visit the many art museums in town. I was also in visited in seeing New York City because of its significance in international affairs as the headquarters of the UN. As an avid Model UN competitor during my undergraduate days at Winthrop, this also made New York appealing. However, the fact that New York City was also located outside of Massachusetts, South Carolina and Florida and was considered internationally unique destination that it fit into my requirements for an actual "vacation."



I finally made travel arrangements for New York City for four days during my spring break in March 2011, with my boyfriend Matt. He had always wanted to visit New York as a traveler like I did (he had been there previously for a job interview) but I also just wanted him to be with me during this auspicious occasion. I paid for our bus tickets to leave Boston to New York to leave I think on a Wednesday evening at 1 AM. They were $35 for two people with Peter Pan. I also purchased for us tickets to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera and made dinner reservations at a two Michelin-star rated restaurant called Public. Matt and I would be staying with my friend Bineta and meet up with my other friend Bianca, later on. The following five blog entires will be about my trip to New York City with by boyfriend Matt and my friends. Enjoy and thanks!

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