Over the span of four weeks, I took two week-long trips to Manhattan. The first trip was so that I could try and picture myself potentially moving there for law school. The second trip was for my mom’s spring break and to look at apartments. I’ve been to New York plenty of times before. My aunt and uncle lived there for about ten years, and my parents even let me go to New York instead of dealing with the hassle of Prom my senior year of high school. However, this trip was different. On every other occasion (even when I was seven on my first visit ever), I could always picture myself there being one of those well-dressed women taking the subway to work and going to dinner with friends. What makes these two most recent trips stand out among the rest is that the idea of living in New York was no longer a fairy tale and very much so a potential reality. I’ll delve more into the details about my final law school decision at the end of this post, but I think I should move on to my trip first!
When traveling to New York, you can either fly into JFK or La Guardia. JFK is a bigger airport, but La Guardia is closer to the city and was just redone. You can ignore all the rumors about how La Guardia is a gross airport. Ever since they finished the renovation, it’s been really nice. Most people will likely take Ubers or Lyfts into the city, but I usually take a yellow cab because there’s a line of them waiting outside, and it’s a flat fee into the city. Just be warned that if you have severe motion sickness like I do, you’ll want to take Dramamine or use a motion sickness patch for the drive into and out of the city. I get sick every time. When it comes to hotels, I don’t really have any suggestions. They’re all going to be small and expensive for the most part, but that’s very characteristic of New York real estate in general. Just take it all as part of the experience. For the actual duration of your visit, I recommend approaching the city by area so that you aren’t scrambling all over every day. You’ll most likely only take the subway and walk the city. Manhattan is very easy to navigate, but you’ll thank me from a logistics standpoint if you just do a neighborhood or two per day.
Hands down, one of the best parts about New York is the museums. They are some of the best in the world! The first that usually comes to mind is The Metropolitan Museum of Art aka the site of many Blair Waldorf and Jenny Humphrey spats. I’ve been to The Met on all my visits to New York, but I always get lost. Now that there is one way traffic through the various wings of the museum, it’s even easier to get lost believe it or not. Some must-sees here include the Egyptian Room, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Leutze, John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X, the Greek and Roman statue collection, and the Frank Lloyd Wright room. Not far from The Met is The Guggenheim. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright himself, you just might recognize it from that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie gets caught in the rain on her “date with the city” as she called it. I very much so love the permanent exhibits at The Guggenheim, but their most recent temporary exhibit on leisure, the countryside, and ecological economics felt like something straight out of my last quarter of college. It definitely isn’t the exhibit for everyone. Between The Met and the Guggenheim, the upper east side has two fantastic museums for anyone to fill their day.
As you head downtown, you’ll first come across MoMA. This is my favorite museum in New York. It is extremely enjoyable and home to cultural classics such as a few Jackson Pollocks (I know it’s cliche to like those ones, but I do), Van Gough’s Starry Night, Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, and Chagall’s I and the Village. Those art history GEs I took in college always make me feel so cultured at this particular museum!
At the very tip of Manhattan, you can find the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Unfortunately, my thoughts on this museum won’t be very popular. Architecturally, it’s stunning. In the middle of one of the most compact parts of Manhattan, the inside of this building is spacious by comparison. What this museum does a great job of is preserving actual artifacts from the day and pieces of the wreckage. Unfortunately, many pieces of the wreckage were displayed almost like modern art sculptures, which just feels bizarre and almost disrespectful, even though it isn’t. What this museum seriously misses the mark on is the intensity. I half expected to cry, but I wasn’t even remotely close to tears. If you only have a weekend in the city, I wouldn’t put this on your list of places to go unless you really wanted to. In my opinion, the Bush Library in Dallas did a better job of handling the discussion and presentation of 9/11.
Not far from the 9/11 Memorial Museum is Battery Park, where you can catch a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Being crunched for time, I chose to skip the Statue of Liberty stop. You get some great views of it from the ferry. You might be surprised to find it smaller than you were expecting! The ferry only makes three stops: Battery Park, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. While I can’t speak for what the Statue of Liberty stop is like, Ellis Island is absolutely wonderful. The museum is spread out across the entire building, and you follow the same path through the building that immigrants did back in the day, learning about each step in the immigration process.
New York is full of museums and these are just a few of them. I recommend doing research on some of the smaller museums to see if any pique your interest. Because of the pandemic, it’s mostly large museums that are open right now. One museum I wish I had been able to go to is the Tenement Museum. It’s my mom’s favorite, and it’s a seriously overlooked museum in New York. If you are able to check it out and see the apartments, it is definitely worth the time.
While New York may have some of the best museums in the world, there is so much more to do than that. Ordinarily, I would suggest seeing one of the Broadway shows (dress casually), but the pandemic has put a kink in many of those types of plans. Luckily, New York has plenty of sightseeing to offer.
At the top of the list, you should really put Central Park. It is one of the most beautifully curated of parks I’ve ever seen. When I was there in February and saw snow for the first time, I also saw plenty of kids sledding and making snowballs. When the park isn’t covered in snow, it’s the perfect place for a run or whatever other outdoor activity you have in mind, from picnics to soccer games. Be sure to find your favorite statues in the park too! Mine is the Alice in Wonderland statue near E 75th Street.
When it comes to three of the city’s most iconic buildings, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the top of Rockefeller Center, you have a few options. I’ve been to the top of the Empire State Building before, but the best view is from the top of Rockefeller Center because you can see the Empire State Building from there. In my opinion, just see the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building from the sidewalk and spend the money on Top of the Rock. Because I went when it was snowing, the view was pretty hazy, but I kind of liked seeing it that way. On a clear day though, you can see the whole city!
Some miscellaneous attractions in Manhattan include Grand Central, the Flatiron Building and Madison Square Park, the New York Public Library and Bryant Park, and Times Square. Each of these deserves a visit in their own right because of how iconic they are, but they probably won’t be the highlight of your trip. Just know that Times Square is packed with tourists and is every local’s least favorite part of the city, but it’s the best place to find any corny I ♡ NY souvenirs you may want.
New York is also home to some of the best cuisine in the world. However, I’m not the best at planning out my meals when I travel (oops), so a quick summary of everywhere I ate on my last two trips to New York is probably the most efficient way to sum up my meals. For the most part, I skipped breakfast and just had coffee, but Sarabeth’s is a lovely brunch spot, and they make a great mimosa. My favorite breakfast in the city is Jack’s Wife Freda. I have always loved my food there, and I highly recommend the green shakshuka. Also in SoHo, Shuka is a fantastic place for the best shawarma I’ve ever had in my life. Be sure to order some za’atar fries with your lunch too! Even though they have Sugarfish and Eataly in LA, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t amazing places to get a good meal in NY. I could have Sugarfish sushi for every meal if I could, and Eataly just hits right at the end of a long day. For more authentic New York pizza, Grimaldi’s is a serious staple that I was guilty of ordering to my hotel room on more than one occasion. However, Don Antonio’s in midtown is another favorite of mine that I always have to go back to any time I’m in the city. The best (and I mean the best) food you’ll find in all of Manhattan is Pio Pio. I’ve only ever been to the location in Hell’s Kitchen, but Pio Pio is Peruvian food that makes me salivate just thinking about it. My go-to’s are the aji de gallina, arroz chaufa, tostones, and the ceviche.
While I’m glad that I had such an amazing time in Manhattan, I changed my mind on where I will be going to law school. I had initially planned on moving to New York, but I will instead be moving to San Francisco for UC Hastings! There were a lot of factors that went into this decision and why I changed my mind. Ultimately, UC Hastings was the highest ranked school I got into, and I am lucky to get in-state tuition there. However, a large part of my decision had to do with the fact that I didn’t want to leave California. I’m a California girl through and through and leaving just didn’t feel right, even though New York will always be near and dear to my heart. San Francisco seemed like a good fit because I could stay in California but have a different dating scene (read my rant about that here). While I will miss LA dearly, I am excited to see what SF has in store for me.
xx
Emily
