My sister and I purchased spa tickets from a peddler in the middle of Times Square. Sometimes, I’m worried about getting ripped off and sold fake tickets, but we kept faithful and prayed that we didn’t drop $35 each for nothing. We made it to the salon, and sure enough, the tickets were real. We each got our hair washed, conditioned, cut, and blown out. They were trying to sell me on other hair treatments, but I was not about to pay $700 for a keratin hair treatment that would take more than 3 hours. The lady was rather huffy that I wouldn’t accept the treatment even when she offered it to me for $200. They did an excellent job cutting our hair, and giving us shellac manicures, for the price of the voucher.
After our spa treatments and complementary red wine, we were booked for dinner with my cousin Leanna and her adorable little family. We ordered disgustingly large portions of Italian food. Dylan always wants Italian food, though I think she likes the Parmesan cheese more than anything else on the table. At dinner, they told us that they planned on taking an adventure out to the Statue of Liberty in the morning. I wanted to see Lady Liberty up close at least once during this New York visit. I hadn’t managed to make it out to her yet, so of course we wanted to go see her with our family! We thought that they were going on the free fairy across, but instead, they bought us tickets to ride the Beast.
After a free contemporary dance class in Bryant Park, my sister and I grabbed some muffins and coffee at the famous Crumbs bakery in Times Square. The Beast was an actual beast painted green with a large grinning mouth and sharp teeth. There was a height requirement that Dylan passed by a h-a-i-r and we were in for a very wild and wet ride. The driver kept whipping around in doughnuts, and the Hudson River would spray over the sides of the boat. We saw the beautiful green lady and returned back to shore. The tour-guide kept picking on us the entire tour and at the end of it all, dumped an entire bucked of river water all over us. My sister was closer to him, so she took most of the spill.
The next stop on our agenda was a trip to Brooklyn. This would be my first time in Brooklyn this summer! I’d heard people raving about the Brooklyn Smorgasbord and had really wanted to venture across the East River in order to see what the hullabaloo was all about. We got off the train in a rather sketchy neighborhood. There were a few little boys, no older than 11, hooting horrible comments at my sister and I. I feel bad for children like this, because their parents must be a hundred times worse. I was absolutely disgusted with the children’s vile comments, and I knew at that moment why I had never went out to Brooklyn by myself this summer.
Once we walked 20 minutes and out of this scary neighborhood, Brooklyn wasn’t too bad. In Williamsburg, there were several little cafés with hipster fellows sitting outside, strumming on their guitars in the sunlight. These places seemed wildly popular, but we needed to make it to the Smorgasbord before three. There were hundreds of vendors selling small delicacies. Then we came upon a fish shack that piled fish, shrimp, and chips to our apatite’s liking. We ate the delicious fish fry with our fingers, while sitting in the grass amongst the food metropolis.
Always,
Alena Netia Horowitz
