I went to New England last summer, took a whole bunch of pictures, then I started this article and proceeded to not finish it for four months straight. I feel as though it is more than high time that I went back through here and showed off some of the great things I got to see.

I took the trip in mid-July, a few weeks before going back to school for the year. At the time, I was finishing the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and the last time I had been to Boston was my Senior year of high school, so I knew I really wanted to get a good look around both Manhattan and Boston, particularly to visit Harlem and a few big-name universities.

So, I took a six-hour flight to Newark, then ended up hoteled in Jersey City, NJ, right outside of Manhattan. Right outside my hotel, there was this little gang of homeless street-cats just chilling out near a railway line, and I thought that they looked super cool, so I took plenty of pictures of the little guys. Check it out:

If you want to see all of the cat pictures, you can see them here.

Of course, I was in New Jersey, after all, so there are plenty of non-feline flicks from there. What was most interesting to me was the ethnic-Indian neighborhood called “Little India” near where I was staying.

It had this particular street called “India Square” that had all sorts of cool restaurants and shops. I even had lunch at one of the places, and it was pretty great.

I also just generally walked around New Jersey, and that was fun. For example, I got to see Central Avenue:

Then, once New Jersey was all said-and-done, I skipped on over to Manhattan. First, I headed on over to Central Park, and got a good look at all sorts of interesting wildlife and greenery:

Naturally, as anybody in Manhattan, I spent plenty of time on the subway:

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As a Vancouverite, it baffled me just how hot the NYC subway was. The Vancouver SkyTrain is always freezing cold, regardless of the time of year, so I naturally went into the NYC subway with my full jacket on. I was completely wrong.

Anyway, I spent plenty of time walking around Manhattan normally. I first found my way over to Times Square, getting to see big, gold Raisin’ Canes:

then I oogled at all of the advertisements on Times Square:

This photo of Sydney Sweeney was actually what led me to write this article.

I also found the crowd at Times Square incredibly interesting:

it was absolutely packed with people! I was so suprised. Next, I did a bit more looking-around, visiting (just outside of) Columbia University and Barnard College, and Tom’s Diner:

Alongside, of course, plenty of Zohran Mamdani posters and Malcolm X landmarks:

When all of this was said and done, I took and AMTRAK over to Boston. I started out by taking a trip over to Northeastern University as a friend of mine goes here:

Then, of course, I headed over to Harvard and MIT as is ritual:

And to end out, I headed over to Salem, MA, to do a witch tour:

And, altogether, it was super fun! There’s a ton more pictures, but in general, I thought this was a fun trip. There wasn’t really much that was all that interesting to see out of the universities, though, because I had already been to Harvard and most of MIT was under construction and blocked off.