Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chinatown

For our second full day in New York, we had scheduled a visit to NYU. NYU’s buildings don’t form much of a campus. Basically, they’re all clustered around Washington Square Park. However, Waverly Place runs parallel to Washington Square Park, just on the other side of some of NYU’s buildings. Growing up, I was a Wizards of Waverly Place addict (for those of you who don’t know, it’s only the best Disney Channel TV show ever), and so of course I had to stop and take a few snapshots of the street sign. Washington Square Park was a beautiful park, adorned with trees and walkways and a central square with an arch through which you can see the Empire State Building. Under the arch was a shrine to the Paris attack that had happened two weeks prior. Since the rest of the campus was so scattered and urban, I loved that it all centered around a unified and nature-filled park.

Central Park and The Met

Central Park. What a quintessential New York experience. Our first full day in New York, after a college visit in the morning, we took the subway straight to Central Park to wander through its trails and trees and eventually made our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly know as the Met, (conveniently located right on the edge of Central Park). I don’t know how anyone would survive living in New York without Central Park; it’s such a breath of fresh air. You’d think it would be an oasis away from the city, and it is, for the most part. But the city noises and skyscrapers peeking out over the trees are always there to remind you that you are, in fact, still in one of the biggest cities in the world.