#BEDM Day 20 - Being Adventurous

Day 20 of Rosalilium’s 'Blog Every Day in May' Challenge

I'm going to tell you a tale of a 19 year old girl who dreamt of visiting New York, of huge skyscrapers and the champagne 'Sex and the City' style lifestyle.

 

 

One day, a flyer from STA Travel dropped through the letterbox of her student flat - 'Returns to New York only £185!' the headline screamed (mainly due to the fact that it wasn't long after 9/11). The naive young girl (who'd always loved a bargain) thought to herself 'that doesn't sound half bad!' and cogs started turning in her brain.

'If I went at the beginning of September' she thought, 'I could fit it in before going back to Uni - I wonder what cheap youth hostels there are in the centre?'

 

 

So the girl started tapping at her computer keyboard, looking for a place to stay, adamant that she was going to the Big Apple, regardless of the horrified protests from her mother (that only made the girl more determined to prove she could do it).

 Fast forward a few months and eagerly clutching her bus tickets, flight tickets, dollars, and hostel confirmation, she took some tentative steps onto the coach from Bath Bus Station to Heathrow Airport.

 

 

All along the M4, all across the skies over the Atlantic and all through the corridors of Newark Airport, she kept telling herself 'I can turn back at any moment; if I really don't like it, I can use my credit card and go straight back home'. Of course, this wasn't a side of her thoughts that anyone else knew, not least her own mother and father!

 

 

 The first thing she had to learn was to find her way from the airport to the centre of Manhatten. Now any other normal person would have realised that at 10pm at night, the safest way to get there would be by coach with all the other tourists. Not so, thought the young girl, 'the subway is much cheaper!' - regardless of the fact she had no idea how to use it or where to get off or even the fact that there was no-one else using it.

 

 

But still, she ploughed on, managed to make her way to 34th Street Station, pulled her luggage bag up the stairs and was greeted with the most amazing sights, sounds and smells, thinking ' this is fantastic, it really is exactly like the movies!'

 

 

She had a fabulous five days, walking for absolutely miles, getting blisters on her feet (until she realised she could buy a all-day travelcard...) and visited as many free musuems and experiences as she could - South Street Seaport, the East Village, Wall Street, Grand Central Station, New York Public Library and Central Park as well as many others. She made a few mistakes (well, who doesn't?); things like walking though Lower Manhatten on her own at 9pm and the stupidest thing - getting off the bus at the wrong stop and being dumped in the middle of Staten Island (opposite a corner shop with two customers having a massive barney).

 

 

On the last night, the slightly wiser and just-a-little-bit-suntanned young woman paid to go up the Empire State Building at dusk. She looked down at the city streets and thought to herself 'what an amazing adventure I've had, surely, one day, sometime far in the future, I'll tell the tale of how Granny's first trip abroad on her own was to the city that never sleeps, aged just 19 years old.' 

 

 

The young woman's now an older woman and only has one regret about the whole trip...

...back in 2002, the word 'selfie' didn't even exist (let alone a decent camera phone), consequently, there's no proof the young girl was actually ever there!