NYC Weekend Guide

It's beginning to feel a bit like all work and no play on this blog. So today, let's talk about all things NYC!

The last time I focused on the city, it was after a quick weekend trip in May and I documented my current impression of New York so that I would be able to see if it changed after my internship. Back then, I thought prices other than rent were pretty comparable, everyone was nice and Central Park was a good enough respite from the concrete jungle. 

After over a month in the city, I do spend a lot of time in Central Park and I've met a ton of great people. However, I was definitely wrong about the cost of living thing. Grocery shopping here is almost like Sunday afternoon entertainment, because all you can do is laugh when you spent $10 on a bag of grapes.

Grocery prices aside, my friends and I have managed to go on a lot of adventures that were free, or at least had great intentions of being free. Last weekend, we wanted to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. After exploring Brooklyn during the day, we headed over to the bridge at night. It took one train transfer, a half hour of confused wandering and one ominous piece of advice from a construction worker - "I guess you can walk there…just be really, really, REALLY careful" - to convince us it was time to spring for a cab. But the night view from the bridge was amazing, right up until it started lightening and we realized a bridge probably wasn't the greatest place for us to be standing. But the Manhattan skyline illuminated by lightening? Totally worth the risk of electrocution. 

Then there was the time we stepped out of our dorm and right into some sort of street festival. It was, of course, free to walk around, but none of our wallets escaped unscathed. That new iPhone cover, watermelon smoothie and framed picture of the Brooklyn bridge I bought were clearly necessities.

There are also the decisions that happen on a whim. Spending $25 to go to the top of Rockefeller Center, for example. Being the magazine nerds that we are, we spent most of our time up there identifying our respective offices. 

That's just a small sample of the things we've done, mostly because at the beginning of the summer we were in a hurry to do everything at once. When you only have about 10 weekends to explore a city like this, it feels necessary to fit in several events a day. As the summer progressed, that sense of urgency ebbed a bit. Not because we don't want to do everything, but because we're realizing that most of us will be back within the next year, this time for the long haul. I'm going to have to remember that when I pack up to leave in a few weeks.

What are some of your favorite things to do in the city?

Until next Tuesday,

Edit intern