Panic Monster Abroad (part 2)

Teamales, I made it. This time last week I was in New York City, despite what felt like hundreds of nights made sleepness by my level of worrying, I went, I conquered and I blady loved it. In the part one of this post I discussed all my travelling fears (you can find that bad boy here– although if you work for border control and/or are an angsty flyer, I would recommend giving it a miss) so now I’m going to return to that piece, re-evaluate whether those things were worth worrying about and what thoughts I actually should’ve been prioritising.

But firstly, the winner of my Blogiversary Giveaway is……… the darling Victoria from Viicreative (it’s in the post as we speak)

Thank you to everyone who entered, tweeted about it, sent links to friends and were just generally lovely- hopefully things will be even bigger if I can make it to year 2!

Heathrow security, to my surprise, was lovely. Granted, I had to take my boots off, but to be honest anyone that wears boots on a plane probably deserves to be punished- at least I dodged the full body scanner and so-called ‘hand search’ (which I refuse to believe isn’t dodgy). I’d put all my energy into worrying about departing that I’d hardly thought about actually arriving at JFK, which I probably should’ve done considering American border force was terrifying ft. full finger printing, retina scanners and countless questions about who I was travelling with (jeez am I really ugly enough for you to be surprised that I’m not travelling alone? #Rude). But it definitely wasn’t worth worrying about; after all we made it through. Plus, I’d managed to get 4 plane films in (Burnt, The Avengers, Carol and Trainwreck, just in case you were wondering- which obviously you were) so I was walking on sunshine beside Katrina and the Waves.

There were no unoxygenated, 3 wheeled buses taking us from one place to another, only subways which were actually so much fun (except from the drunk/pervy man who tried to conveniently fall asleep in my groin) (oh, and the man who dropped his iPhone 6 between the platform and the train- apparently it’s not only humans that need to ‘mind the gap’ these days) even when we missed our stop and almost ended up in The Bronx. When we eventually got to our 16^th floor apartment in Manhatten, it felt like we’d just moved in.

AND CENTRAL PARK. I was previously so fearful that I’d get lost or hit by a bike or eaten by a hungry horse-and-carriage horse, however it’s since become one of my favourite places and I’ve centrally parked my heart there. (Until the traffic warden comes along, at least.) In fact, there were so many things that I’d panicked about without needing to- Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, the Staten Island Ferry (okay, maybe this one’s more understandable. Essentially I thought it was like a five seater fishing boat driven by some random Greek man who smelt of sardines with the song from Zorba the Greek in the background, and you’d end up on an island in the middle of the Hudson River because you’d been lost in translation. Who knew it was a blady 3,000 seater ferry? Not me. Until I was on it, of course.) If I’d let the worry win, I wouldn’t have seen half the things I saw, which feels kind of amazing to say.

What I didn’t, however, worry about was the amount of Starbuckses. There’s literally one on the end of every street, which was heartbreaking because the hot chocolate (or megacringey ‘hottie’ as they call it) was rank. Starbucks is essentially our modern day plague: fast spreading, unhygienic and dangerous (for your wallet, since it’s like $7 for a coffee) plus, slightly less plague-like but equally as heartbreaking, you need a code to use the toilets. I am not a codes kind of girl. If it’s more complex than locking the door, I’m weeing elsewhere.

Speaking of the toilets, possibly another thing that would’ve been more useful to worry about than whether there’d be scissors in my suitcase were the small slits either side of American ‘restroom’ doors. You could see people on the loo! I couldn’t tell if they were built by lesbians or just ran out of materials to finish, so sacrificed our privacy and dignity instead. Never have I felt more exposed when changing my super absorbent tampon. I might write to Barack asking him to sort it out before my next visit.

Because trust me, I will be visiting again. If NYU fees weren’t almost £50,000 a year and property in Greenwich Village didn’t hit the millions then I’d live there in a heartbeat. It’s good to know that obsessing over something doesn’t make it any more likely or unlikely to happen, as well as how most of the situations you panic about actually end up to be some of the best you end up in. Next week’s post will return to the usual feministing, but for now I’m sipping on the fact that I did it! Thanks to mac and cheese rolls, of course.

P.S. Let’s not lie here, this post was just an excuse to show you some holiday photos and make you all jealous.