The Big City!

One of the main building of Columbia University

We spent our last day before moving into our dorms at UPENN touring the wonderful city of New York! We began by taking Amtrak to the city. It was another early start so we decided to save time and eat breakfast on the train. I ordered a yogurt parfait and a blueberry muffin and took a seat along with Audrey by some women who were going to the city to see a show. They were from Delaware and were pretty good company for the slightly long train ride. We arrived and immediately went to Columbia University. It was, again, very beautiful. Most of the buildings were closed for the weekend but we got to see some of it through Mr. Hillyer's aunt, Grace. She is a researcher at the university. I very much enjoyed conversing with her and having her with us for half of the day! The school offered a lot and I wish we could have seen more of it. I was particularly interested in how much they focus on philosophy. The names of famous Greek philosophers were even engraved into one of the main buildings in huge lettering. I was also impressed with how involved the alumni are; Grace was telling us about how all the graduates aspire to give back to the school once they've become famous!

After touring the school, we looked around in the gift shop and then made our way down to see a magnificent church and central park. It seems like the people who made central park really thought of everything when they planned it! There was even a pool in the summer which is a skating rink in the winter! I imagine lots of New Yorkers spend a lot of time in this park.

Panoramic View of New York from Central Park 

We then took the Metro, using our cool "Metro cards," to one of Mr. Hillyer's favorite New York Jewish sandwich places. The sandwiches were huge but very good and I found it very interesting that they served us a bunch of pickles in a bowl, a pickled tomato and pickled cabbage with everything we ordered. 

Pastrami Sandwich on rye bread

After lunch, we took the Metro again to Times Square! It was very lively and I liked the atmosphere. We unfortunately had to rush a bit in order to get to the 9/11 memorial by 4:00 PM. The line was huge and the security was everywhere, but the point was made that this event was one of the saddest and most tragic days in a long time for American history. The memorials were twin pools of water falling a long distance into a big, black pit in which the bottom was not visible. After our self guided tour, we looked at some souvenir shops for typical New York souvenirs and then found a place to eat some famous New York pizza! The pizza was very good- we ordered margherita in order to please everyone. Even though we all were very full from the deli and occasional street vendor stops, most of us had a second slice and as a group we managed to finish the whole thing, which surprised us. After dinner, we walked back to the train and came home. I know I feel exhausted after walking over fifteen miles today and I'm sure everyone agrees! We are all looking forward to moving into our dorms tomorrow and starting our class Monday, although I will miss touring the colleges. I wish we could see more, but I'm also eager to begin our "Summer Discovery at Penn.”