So this is about my first trip to the States; I had been waiting to go to America my whole life and was over the moon to be finally going. For the longest time i have always wanted to go to America for university, I still do, so when i got told i will be going int he summer of 2017 for a family holiday I was ecstatic.  

This trip for me was meant to be almost a month long for me but I ended up only going only for five days. It was a family trip where we went to the west coast of America to visit family in different states; we had been waiting about 13 years to be able to go to America so we made this trip long to make up for the lost time. We had some visa issues (this tends to happen a lot to me) which didn’t allow us to travel before this. We had a trip planned for when I was about 6 where we would go to Disney and stay in the hotel and have meals with characters but sadly for family reasons I don’t now remember we weren’t able to go.

You could just imagine the excitement of a 14 year old who had been waiting her whole life to go to USA and is finally able to, I was practically jumping off the walls. Later at check in we found out that I couldn’t board the flight since my visa wasn’t valid because of the prior problems so even though it was not expired I couldn’t travel on it. Now you can just imagine how upset and shocked I would have been, they may have been a few tears that were shed. So my dad and brother went and started the month long trip we had planned while my mum and I had a long drive back from the airport to my house where we would then have to get a new visa. We ended up having to wait 3 weeks till we finally got my passport back with a valid USA visa; we booked flights the same night and flew to meet the rest of my family in New York. My brother and my dad were tired from a long, tedious trip and were ready for these last five days to be over so they could go home; for me on the other hand I had only just started my holiday.  I was extremely excited to finally be here in America so I didn’t care I was only there for five days. I landed mid day so the first day we didn’t do a lot. My sister also flew up from Miami as a surprise since I didn’t get to visit her.

The first day we didn’t do much apart from sit in the house and catch-up with my cousins, I met them for the first time that night but they were really nice. They happened to have booked tickets for a Dessert Fesival in New York; if you don’t know what that is, it is basically where a bunch of dessert restaurants get samples of their stuff and you get to eat a bunch of sweets, it also happens to have a lot of ‘instagram worthy’ picture spots. Now as a person who has a massive sweet tooth that was practically the best thing you could have ever told me (the place I am pretty sure is called Dessert Goals and it goes around the States.) I highly recommend everyone who has a sweet tooth to go, and go with someone who doesn’t like sweets as much so you get their stuff. My sister doesn’t like sweet things that much so she would have a bite or two of her food and then give it to me, it was great. My cousins also drove us around New York but turned it into a gossip girl tour around New York, as a person who loves Gossip Girl this was the best tour I could have gotten and when we got to the Met Steps I had a complete fan girl moment. After the Gossip Girl tour they also took us to Central Park for a picnic, I don’t think I have ever had fast food that good again. So these cousins became one of my favorite cousins very quickly for very good reasons.

We as a family also walked around New York, we did a boat ride around the Statue of Liberty from there we walked to the Wall Street and to the Rockefeller Centre and then the World Trade Centre Memorial. We also experienced the New York subway that day and it was interesting to say the least. We also watched the musical Wicked in Times Square at night and waking through Times Square at night was one of the most beautiful things you can see. Well it was until we had to drive out of Times Square, at that moment I released the New York is never a place you should drive in no matter how much you want to.

As a girl who lives in Dubai and studies in London going to another city and seeing the crowed buildings was very normal to me, almost comforting. But New York has something about it that no matter how many cities you visit you fall completely in love with it, and I did. This trip was two years ago from when I am writing this post and I am still completely in love with New York. One of my top university choices happens to be NYU so if there is one thing I learned from this trip is that I would absolutely love to live there and study there.

We happened to only be there for 3 days since we also drove up to D.C. to visit family and spent a night there ( there is a separate post for that so go read that if you want to ).  Even though it was only a short 3 day trip in New York it was one of the best holidays I have had. I met new family who I absolutely love, I got closer with my sister, I finally got to go to the States after waiting my whole life, and I got closer to my goal of visiting all 50 states by the time I am 25. 

Till the next post my lovelies x