Today, I wanted to share about my experience in New York a couple weeks ago. Yes, this is my second trip this year. No, I don’t care. For context, my younger sister won a competition and had the opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall, so we decided to make a whole weekend trip of it. New York is a fascinating city, and I really enjoy just walking around through the city. First off, we left friday afternoon, stayed over at a cousin’s house friday night, and arrived in the city Saturday morning. After checking into the hotel real quick, my dad and I were left to wander the city a bit, because my sister and mom went to a rehearsal. Because our hotel was near Times Square, my dad and I dropped by the Line Friends store, where I wasted money on RJ stickers and a broken BT21 pen. Unfortunately, I chose the few items that the J-Hope birthday sale didn’t apply to, and the pen doesn’t work. To console myself, we headed over to a Krispy Kreme, where I had a doughnut. It was good. Overall, if you want to go to the Line Friends store, would not recommend the pens, but theres so much cool BTS stuff- statues of each of the characters that are also signed by the members! Be warned though, with New York taxes, the items are all wildly overpriced, especially all the NewJeans stuff. I would recommend trying to find items that are on sale.
After gallivanting all over Times Square with my dad, we dodged Elmo and Mickey Mouse scammers and walked over to a delicious soup dumpling place to meet my mom and sister. The food was all delicious, especially the roast duck noodles.
Next, we headed to a cafe to meet my mom’s college friend, who is a journalist, so I could talk to her about journalism. I had a delicious peppermint mocha, and we had a great conversation. After taking the subway back, we took a quick rest in the hotel, when my grandma arrived.
For dinner, we walked to Korea Town, and we got korean bbq. The food was heavenly, and we ate so much, and they played old kpop songs! My sister kept making fun of me for listening to old kpop, even though I didn’t know any of the songs they played… Man In Love by Infinite isn’t old… right? One of the highlights of the music was a few songs by the man himself, Jay Why Pee. Nevertheless, the food and atmosphere was great, and we had a really good time.
After eating, my mom and grandma left, so my dad took my sister and I around to a couple Kpop stores that my uncle recommended. The first store didn’t have many photocards, but a lot of different types of merch, and it was pretty expensive. I was looking for photocards, though, so we tried the next store, a bookstore, which proved to be the place. I found some cheaper (fake) photocards. If you’ve ever seen the instagram post cards, I got a 60 pack of Zerobaseone cards, for only $16! I also bought a set of Felix photocards for my bestie. My sister wan’t interested in cards, and instead chose a $10 NCT pin. At the hotel, I checked out my new cards- about half were not instagram posts, just normal group pictures- but they did have they boys’ signatures on the back. The instagram ones were mostly group and unit pictures, with two full sets of single person photos. Of course, I gave my sister the Ricky cards, and a couple group cards (Ricky is probably her favorite person on this earth), and I was very happy with my two Yujin cards. DISCLAIMER- I am a minor!!! It’s not creepy that Yujin’s my bias!!! We’re the same age!!!
Anyway, on Saturday morning, we met our cousins at a mall for brunch, but first we stopped by a cute boba shop in the mall, were you could watch the employees roll their own boba. The boba was incredible, and I got a dalgona coffee milk tea. Brunch was at a Jose Andres restaurant, where we had some delicious sausages, potato fries, and eggs. But my highlight of the mall was definitely the shops!!! While we couldn’t really walk around the mall, I was able to ogle through the windows of Dior, Louis Vouitton, Cartier, and more. That evening, we watched the performances at Carnegie, which was very fun.
Monday, we didn’t do much. We took a college tour of Columbia University, and got some New York bagels (of course).
Overall, I loved the whole trip, and I had a really great time. New York is one of my favorite cities, and I always love visiting!