Holiday in the City

Happy July 4th everyone! Wow, I had a lot of fun today! Where should I begin?

I woke up literally 4 minutes before we were supposed to leave. At first, I didn't believe my cell phone, but once it hit me that I was about to be late, my eyes bulged and I jumped from bed. Scrambling, I grabbed my purse and headed out the door after changing and washing. Peewh, I barely made it on time!

Our entire suite headed down to Pinnacles, which is a small shop/bakery right across the street from the Learner Hall side of the Columbia campus. There, we had a "family" breakfast before taking the number 1 subway all the way down to its end point: South Ferry. 

We had originally planned on kiyaking in the Hudson but that failed because the people in charge of that free service were nowhere to be found. Upon arriving at South Ferry, we migrated to the docks to catch a free ferry out to Governor's Island. 

Truthfully, Governor's Island was a major disappointment. There really isn't much to do unless you have a bike or have prepared a picnic. The majority of my suite members wandered around aimlessly before settling down in a restaurant to wait for our RAs.

From there, the day started to pick up. My suitemate Vicky and I went along with 2 other girls, Stephany and Richelle to go and see the third movie of the Twilight saga, Eclipse. Although I had heard some positive reviews from friends, I didn't come to expect too much from the movie. Therefore, Eclipse was rather a pleasant surprise. In my opinion, it was better than New Moon and some parts were even better than Twilight. After watching the movie, we made a quick stop at the Hello Kitty store before jumping back onto the subway to get to our dorms in order to meet the RAs and our other suitemates to go watch fireworks!

Before going to the Riverside Park by 72nd Street, we stopped by a nearby French restaurant to pick up take-out orders. We packed 5 blankets for the suite and camped out on the grass to eat, talk, and play games until the fireworks began. It was a lot of fun! Two other guys named Kevin and Nick joined us and we played group hand games with Monica, one of our RAs, until the fireworks started!

Despite a slow start and an awful lot of walking under the baking sun, today was a lot of fun! Now that I come to think about it, we didn't really do that many things today for spending an entire day out in the city. But in retrospect, this has been one of the best 4th of Julys I've ever had!