Quick Trip to New York City for New Year Celebration

I would say that I started this trip with so little planning and not many things I wanted to do for the trip. Maybe the only reason that I decide to go to New York City for a couple days is simply an opportunity for me to see my old friends from various groups that I would not see in Cambridge and Boston.

This trip had so little planning that I only got a round-trip bus ticket three days beforehand. I would say the shortest amount of time that I prepared for any trips. I had some idea that I would want to go to New York City for winter break, but I did not know when exactly until there was no time left to me to decide. So I just bought the tickets.

There are two things that I liked about this quick four-day-and-three-night trip to New York City.

What I wanted to do: see old faces in a different city. 
I started this trip, not with finding a place to stay, but with a quick meet up with my Thai friend from Northwestern (Mind). I didn't expect to see him there until I realized that he was in New York City and actually flying back to Chicago on the night that I arrived. So, I purposefully booked the earliest bus ride to New York City in order to see him before his flight. It was nice to get to meet with people from Chicago, where I spent my last four years. I also met his friend who is currently studying law at NYU.

P'Mind at Grace Street in New York City

The second group of friend that I met is my other Thai friends who I would stay with for the next three nights. It was nice catching up with these friends after each of us has moved from undergraduate to graduate school. We shared the experience of our first semester in graduate school, how they are similar or different. As a host for this trip, they also showed me around New York City. I wouldn't say too much about it here as this will be the second thing that I liked about this trip. Yet again, I met another new Thai friend who was also visiting New York City at the same time.

Then, I met up with one of my old classmates from UChicago (Mingli) at a cafe where she was, unexpectedly, studying for her Masters Program. We quickly chit-chatted before decided to get dinner at a Mexican burrito nearby. We ended up talking about my research projects in astrophysics and other related topics in black hole and galaxies. Nice to talk to old friends again.

The last person that I met in The Big City is another classmate from UChicago (Lisa) at a sushi place near where I stayed. Again, it was always nice to get to meet an old friend from college. We talked about our current works (banking/grad school) and life (living in an apartment in The City/living in a dorm in Cambridge) and other experiences that we had since we graduated from college.

Just with these experiences, the trip to New York City this time is worthwhile and I am ready to do it again if that means I will get to meet more of my old friends who is now living there (surprisingly, there are many more but they simply went back home to celebrate the holiday). However, that wasn't all I got from this trip.

What I didn't expect from this trip: chance to explore more of the city.
I guess most people would say this should be the main focus of the trip to New York City, to explore. But I didn't think about that when I got on a bus early morning heading toward the city in the first snow of the year.

Nevertheless, I got a chance to visit various places in New York from Chinatown to art museums to Central Park to Times Square.

The two places that I spent most of my time are The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) (which is similar to Art Institute in Chicago and Museum of Fine Art in Boston), and Museum of Modern Art  (MOMA) (which is similar to most contemporary art museums. Either looking at George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River at The Met or walking along Claude Monet's Water Lilies at MOMA demonstrated that there are many more things that I had to explore in New York City.

Bicycle Wheel - Marcel Duchamp

Apart from these two museums, I visited Chinatown in the morning to be the first in line for all-you-can-eat hotpot, and Central Park as we walked to the Met from the train station (I have to come back to Central Park in the summer when the park is more lively). I also walked to Times Square just two days before New Year Eve. Even though I didn't attend the celebration (because of countless stories about it from closed friends), I could feel the atmosphere for the holiday as I walked through a Disney's store that day.

Because of all these, now I want to go back to New York City, not just because I wanted to see old friends (well, I still want to do that), but also because I want to explore more of The Capital of the World.