We arrived at school at approximately 1am on Sunday 17th July. Most of us were all pretty tired by the time we got to Heathrow airport and we had to check in. We saw West-Ham players while walking through duty free!
By about 10am we boarded the plane. We had our own TVs built into the back of the seats so we sat down to watch some films and TV shows.
Skip a couple of hours and we were finally in New York, the city that never goes to sleep. The heat hit us as we walked out of JFK airport. I recommend wearing shorts as temperatures were over 30°C!
It was 3pm in New York when we reached the hotel. After going up to our rooms and dropping off our luggage we got the subway to Central Park. It was amazing. We later went to The Hard Rock Café where we could look around and buy some of their merchandise if we liked before having dinner.
The next day we caught the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. It was such a lovely place that we spent two hours there on Liberty Island. Later on, and back on dry land, we walked to the 9/11 memorial. It was quite shocking how big the area was and it is such a lovely tribute to the people who lost their lives there. We also went in the 9/11 museum where we could learn more about it and see some artefacts from the wreckage. That night we had dinner in China Town and found out who had won the prizes for the most effort filling in their New York Maths booklet.
We later walked over Brooklyn Bridge in the dark and were able to snap some very nice photos of New York at night.
On the third day we visited the Museum of Mathematics in the morning and went shopping at a well-known store, Macy’s. They had everything, from fast food to designer labels such as Gucci! There’s something for everyone. We also went to JC Penny’s. That evening we went to Planet Hollywood for dinner and went to the Empire State Building. It had great views of New York. Not until we got back to our hotel did we realise that the Empire State Building lights up!
On the fourth day we went to Grand Central Station and it looked even better than we’d thought. There was even an Apple store on one side of the station. A ten-minute walk led us to the Rockerfeller Center which had better views than the Empire State Building. We went to Bubba Gumps for dinner that night and watched Aladdin on Broadway.
The next day was our final day. We returned to some of our favourite places in New York before later travelling to the airport for another long flight home.
By Jacob Burton-Gray and Bradley Tossell 9LK
