Those Midnight Memories "The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." -Saint Augustine

“If you listen, you can hear it. The city, it sings.” New York City is The City That Never Sleeps, no matter the time of day there’s always new things to discover, interesting people to meet and different places to explore. I think that’s what makes New York so remarkable, because as amazing as it is during the day, nothing compares to how captivating it can be at night.

My friends and I had decided to go to New York City for a week, ready with a detailed list of places we wanted to go and itinerary filled to the last minute, designed to keep us on track. But thinking back, my favourite experience wasn’t visiting Times Square or the Statue of Liberty. As great as those were, nothing compares to finding myself alone, lost in a city I knew nothing about at two in the morning.

In hindsight, trying to find a convenience store that I saw in passing hours earlier was not my finest moment, but I figured it was worth a shot. I remember sitting in McDonald’s, eating chicken nuggets, truly embracing the American way of living, when I was joined by a group of teenagers. Obviously I was a bit concerned, my parents thoroughly warned me about stranger danger before I left, but soon enough we were talking and laughing with each other about the most mundane things as if we’d known each other our entire lives.

Leaving that McDonald’s, I got to visit parts of New York that I might have missed, that tourists don’t always get to experience. We ate at this hole in the wall Italian restaurant and got to make our own pizza! We even got to try New York’s Finest Cannolis, not that I had anything to compare them to. We traveled on the subway meeting some amazing musicians, people who chose to do what they loved even though they had jobs to go to the next morning.

As the night drew to an end, we made our way to a pier that I might possibly never revisit and watched the sun rise over the water, painting the city in hues of orange, red and pink. The artificial lights were turned off one by one, fading into nothing as New York was transformed by the natural glow of the sun.

As we walked back to my hotel, there were no fake promises about keeping in touch or meeting up again in the future. That one night in New York City was more than enough for us and the memories would last us a lifetime. Those early hours of the morning were the moments where I actually felt apart of the city, instead of like an outsider looking in on something that I could never be apart of. I loved it.