My northeastern Spring Break was better

Spring Break is traditionally a week many college students use to catch up on sleep and shamelessly binge-watch an entire series on Netflix — let’s be real, though, who doesn’t occasionally do that in the wee hours of a Monday when you have a 9AM the following morning? No? Just me? If students aren’t staying home, you’d assume they’re traveling to a place far warmer than their college town.

For my #SB2K16, I took a slightly less sunny trip than last year’s Floridian escapade, and I somehow managed to convince five of my friends to road trip with me to my home in exotic Baldwinsville, NY.

After 11 hours on the road and a 3:40 AM arrival to my house, we spent the weekend relaxing and doing things around the village of B’ville. On Saturday night, worlds collided as my parents hosted a small get-together with some family friends, my college friends, and a couple of close friends from high school. The following Sunday, I took the Hoosier crew to the B’ville Diner, a beloved local eatery, and showed them around my high school campus.

Monday we started to kick things up a notch. Since my house is only a few hours away from our Neighbours to the North, we decided to take a day trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto.

We spent some time taking in the stunning beauty of the falls, and then we traveled onward to Toronto and spent the afternoon exploring some of the lesser-known neighborhoods and pubs — the drinking age in Ontario is 19 — of the city.

On Tuesday, we made our way to Boston. There, we met up with my best friend from high school and had dinner with her. After spending the night in the city, we made a quick morning pit stop to the Harbor and, like the true patriots we are, dumped tea into the water.

From there we drove to New York City. Naturally, our first stop was to get the NYC-newbies some authentic New York style pizza. Being gluten free, I sadly was unable to share in their experience and opted for a Chipotle burrito bowl instead.

Over the course of the rest of the day, we hit up Central Park, the 9/11 memorial and museum, a kick-ass burger joint called Five Napkin for dinner, and finished off with a stroll around Times Square.

Oh, and we also managed to take the subway in the wrong direction — twice.

We finally made it back to Baldwinsville in the early hours of Thursday morning. We spent the first chunk of the day recuperating from our 72 hours of travel insanity. Then we began our celebration of St. Paddy’s Day by going to Tipperary Hill, the Irish district of the city of Syracuse — it’s about 20 minutes away from Baldwinsville — and having dinner at Coleman’s, an authentic Irish pub.

On Friday, our last day in Baldwinsville, we got dressed up and went out to a nice Italian restaurant in the area as a last hurrah before making the long trek back to Bloomington.

Though often fast-paced and chaotic, this year’s Spring Break was wonderful. In a week’s time, I covered over 2800 miles with five of my favorite people in the world. Not only did they get to see some of the metropolitan hot spots of the East Coast, but they also got to see where I grew up and who I grew up with. It was amazing to get to share that part of myself with these people, and I feel like I’ve grown closer to each of them by sharing this experience with them.

Sure, beach-bound trips have their appeal, and spending a late-winter week in summer weather is by no means the worst thing in the world, but sometimes choosing an unconventional vacation destination can be even more worthwhile.