As I first started writing this, I was sitting on a hotel room couch in Tucson, AZ. I went for a few days to visit my grandparents because they stay in Tucson during the winter months and I hadn’t seen them in a long time. Even though it was a quick three-day trip, I still loved every minute of it; I participated in some of my grandma’s favorite activities while in Arizona, even better I was exploring a new place I hadn’t been before. This is one of the main reasons why I love to travel so much. 

I know we all know those people who just LOVE to travel and they go backpacking across Europe or stay in one of those bungalows in Bora Bora. Trust me, this is not my kind of traveling. I can’t sit in a car for long road trips and I get claustrophobic in plane rides, so I   pretty much just travel throughout the states. I’ve gone to Canada a couple of times and Mexico once, but that is as far away from the U.S that I have chosen to venture. When I get older, I hope to buy one of those maps of the world where you scratch off every place you have traveled to, and try to fill it up as much as I can. 

However, out of the places that I have traveled to already in my life, there is one place that has stuck with me the most. Whether you call it “The Big Apple” or “The City That Never Sleeps” or even “The Birthplace of Timothee Chalamet,” New York City is one of the most famous and celebrated cities on the globe. Another alternative name for the city is “Lily Sage’s Favorite Place In The World.” 

The only time I have been to NYC was January of this year; I have been counting down the days until I get to go back. I went on a school trip with a couple of my friends and quite literally had the time of my life. You should already know that “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift and “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys were on repeat the entire trip. I had dreamed of traveling to NYC ever since I can remember; it was always top of my bucket lists or dream boards, and my childhood best friend and I had talked about moving there together since we were in about eighth grade. So as you can tell, I was ecstatic about going to the famous city.

On this school trip we did everything imaginable for a tourist in the big city; we went to the 82nd floor of the Empire State Building, went to a Broadway show, saw Lady Liberty, shopped on Fifth Avenue and I even got to live out my Blair Waldorf moment sitting on the Met steps. This might be the cheesiest thing in this article, but I truly felt like I belonged there; I immediately fell in love. And even though most of the activities that we did were considered “touristy,” they just made me feel more connected to New York, and this connection is what makes me love traveling so much. 

When a person travels, they get to make a new city their home for a couple of days and they get a little taste of what it has to offer. Then, when they get back to their original home, they can recharge and prepare to try out a new place, without ever fully committing to one place. 

I plan on committing to New York for a couple of years after college, as I prepare to take on the rest of the globe.