Busy Day In The City That Never Sleeps

Today was our last day in New York City, but we made sure to make it count!

We took a ferry to get to the Statue of Liberty.  We were lucky because our ferry was a good one and we got good spots to take pictures, but after that we saw that all the other ferries were really full.  At the Statue of Liberty, we took a group picture in our trip tshirts, and then we all took a looooooot of photos.  We went shopping at the souvenir shop, and we had a great view of the NY skyline from Liberty Island.

We had lunch in Times Square, and lots of time to go shopping. Many people went to Forever 21 or to the MnM shop.  We took pictures with Buzz Lightyear and the Blue M-n-M!  We even saw the famous Naked Cowboy! (but he’s not totally naked!). 

After that, we went to the 9/11 Memorial, which was really depressing.  Now there are just names on the memorial, but before, those names were real people.  We saw white roses on some of the names, which we learned means that today would have been their birthday.  We touched the Survivor Tree, which is a tree that survived all the chaos of 9/11 and is now growing again at the memorial, and now we are lucky for the whole next year.

Next we went to Sbarro to eat dinner.  We had New York pizza, which some of us think is better than Chicago pizza (but some people didn’t think so!) The cheesecake was really good, which is also a famous New York food.  We talked about funny questions about our home countries, for example, “ Do you have weekends?”  and “ Do you drink water in Germany?”

Finally, to end the night, we went to see the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, which was magnificent!  There are no words to describe it, because it was so cool.  We would have to sing it!  It was really magical.  My favorite part is when the Phantom takes her down to his lake for the first time, and then the end was really dramatic.

Now, the saddest part.  We have to leave tomorrow and say goodbye to everything.  But tonight on the bus on the way back to the hotel, we saw the beautiful lights of the skyline for the last time, and we got to say our goodbyes to NYC. 

For the people who leave tomorrow, we are taking the last pictures with everybody and exchanging Facebook names to stay in contact because of the friendships we’ve built over the last 3 days.  But for those who stay, they are looking forward to going to see Philadelphia tomorrow!

Beatrice (Germany) and Zemfira (Russia)