By Hannah Martin
My spring break began on Sunday, March 11 at 3:30 a.m. My friend Kathy Adelman and I had free, yes FREE, round-trip tickets to New York City. These free tickets had been acquired last summer on our way home from our trip to New Orleans with OVS. Our flight had been overbooked and the airlines were desperately seeking volunteers to give up their seats and fly out on a later date. Being the poor college students that we both are, Kathy and I couldn't help but take the airlines up on their offer for free round-trip tickets to anywhere in the United States. To make the situation even better, Kathy had a cousin who lived in Brooklyn who was more than willing to let us stay with her over the break. Not only did we have free airfare, but also free living arrangements.
We had only planned to spend six days in New York City, but thanks to an unexpected ice storm, our vacation was extended by three days. I think it would be fair to say that Kathy and I attempted to pack everything possible into those nine days.
One morning, we attended the Regis and Kelly show, in which we succeeded to make it onto national television. The lady sitting directly next to us won five-hundred dollars of lobster and the camera panned over to her (and us) as she screamed in excitement. I spent the remainder of the show wondering how much lobster one was possibly capable of eating. I also discovered that Kelly Ripa is obsessed with Altoids, yes, obsessed. She literally ate an entire can of Altoids during a single one-hour taping of the show.
After the excitement of being on TV, we spent the rest of our days visiting various places throughout NYC. We went to the Met, the Museum of Natural History, and Ellis Island, saw the Statue of Liberty, were given a tour of the United Nations, ate ridiculous amounts of good food - including the biggest dessert of our lives at Serendipity, in which an entire John Cusack movie was based, and attended a sweet concert at Madison Square Garden - The Shins. We managed as well to fight some little kids for a turn on the giant piano at FAO Schwartz that Tom Hanks himself danced on in the movie "Big." We of course got lost a few times and found ourselves at strange places, such as "Diamond Blvd," in which an entire block, perhaps even two, was dedicated to diamond stores only. On one occasion, we even found ourselves in an elevator with a giant, life-size yellow M&M that thought it would be funny to start poking me. To end the trip, we spent St. Patrick's day in an Italian restaurant with some random people. We did eventually meet one person from Ireland which made the celebration of St. Patty's day seem more appropriate.
The experience as a whole was exhausting, but absolutely fantastic. It is definitely a trip that neither Kathy nor I will ever forget.
