How is it my penultimate month in New York already!!!!
The only nice thing is I’m writing this blog post from a cafe in the West Village as I’m lucky to be spending my last few weeks in the city cafe hopping and working on my blog and other projects.
It’s definitely a very nice way to wind down and appreciate my last number of days of being a New Yorker. It’s likely my next (and last) monthly instalment will be sloppy and emotional.
But now that August is over and taking summer with it, Dunkin Donuts are serving all things pumpkin which means fall is coming. My favourite season in New York, it’s just a shame that I’ll only get to appreciate 15 days of it.
But here’s all that I got up to in the last month of summer in New York.
FINISHING UP AT WORK
I remember starting my first day at work like it was yesterday. Now, it’s almost a year to the day and I’ve finished my placement. I remember thinking that 12 months is a long way to go when I sat at my desk in a tiny office with no windows for the first time.
I won’t lie that I was a little glad to be working at home for the last six months since I was able to look out a window for the last half of my placement.
But just like that, my year working in influencer marketing in the financial world is over… for now. Thankfully, I’m being kept on at my job back in the UK once I get home and able to work remotely. In this economic climate, I’m more than grateful to not have to worry about trying to find a job.
I’ll be starting during my quarantine period since I won’t really have much else to do 9-5 locked in my room, plus I’ll have had a nice four-week holiday in New York City to set me up for the working world again.
EXPLORING NEW PLACES
Even though it’s almost time to go home, we’re still spending our days exploring new parts of the city because one year just isn’t enough to see it all.
We spent the night in a hotel in Long Island City with views of the New York skyline and a balcony for my boyf’s birthday which was extra special. We ordered room service and spent 90% of the time out on the balcony taking in the view.
Another day was spent exploring Woodlawn in the Bronx, the most northern part of NYC before entering New York state. This is the famous Irish part of New York and I was very happy to see Irish food, Irish flags and hear Irish voices (even though I’ll be reunited with more of this in a few weeks).
Another area we explored was Park Slope in Brooklyn that’s home to some very nice red-brick town houses. We walked 30,000 steps around the area along with Prospect Park, picked up some free books (it’s crazy how many people left books outside their houses for others to take) and finished the day with a pizza from the famous Lucali’s.
BEING A TOURIST
Since I first stepped foot in New York the day I arrived to live here, I hadn’t before done any of the typical touristy things like go to the top of the Rockefeller, the viewpoint of the Empire State Building, the Met Museum etc.
I had hoped that during my 12-month stay I would be able to tick everything off with ease and probably pack a lot of it in when my mum and dad came to visit in April.
Since I was holding off until the hotter weather and COVID-19 came along and shut everything off to the public, I thought my typical tourist attractions would remain on my travel bucket list forever.
With easing of restrictions over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to go to the top of the Rock, the Empire State Building, get up close and personal with the Statue of Liberty and actually go inside the Met for the first time.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to tick off The Edge platform, 9/11 museum and Ellis Island before heading home so that I’ll have most things ticked off my very generic New York bucket list.
A TRIP TO NIAGARA FALLS
Since our end-of-year roadtrip around the southern states of America had been cancelled, we had quite a bit of savings but with nowhere to go, since 98% of the states were red zones.
Since New York is currently a green state, I’ve seen a lot more of upstate New York than I ever could have imagined. And so the idea came that we would again head upstate but this time to Niagara Falls, right on the border between New York and Canada.
If it hadn’t been for COVID, I don’t think we actually would have ventured to see Niagara Falls but it was amazing to be able to see something that I’ve only ever heard about and seen in movies.
The Falls were amazing, but I can imagine that the Canada side is a lot more glamorous than the New York side. If you want to read about the trip, you can do so here: Two Days in Niagara Falls, New York.
THE START OF THE GOODBYES
With the end of the placement comes the start of the goodbyes as a lot of the other interns on the program start to head home. It’s very strange to be one of the remaining 26 here when we started out with around 150 last August.
For the most part, everyone is heading back to the UK so will very likely meet up again in London or Manchester. But for the friends I’ve made from India, Spain, Australia and around the world, it might be a final farewell.
I hope that it won’t be and that we’ll all meet up again and reminise on that crazy year we had together in New York City and maybe by that time COVID-19 will be just a bad memory.
It’s soon going to be time for us to say our goodbyes to the city we’ve called home for the past 13 months and it might just be the hardest goodbye in the world. But as with everything, it’s never a goodbye. It’s just a ‘see you later’.
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