This is...my favorite travel memory

When I was nine years old, all I wanted to do was to be a Radio City Rockette. I think I saw the Rockettes perform for the first time at the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade on television. Holy moly did I think that they were glamorous - and being a Rockette instantaneously became my little life's goal. ** Let's ignore the fact that I never took tap dancing, and I was barely four feet tall at the time, I had a DREAM! **

On Christmas morning that year I had just finished opening all my gifts, when my mom asked me to go look in the tree. I saw an envelope, with my name on it. EXCITING! Oooooh!!! Inside were three tickets to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular featuring my beloved Rockettes. I was going to New York City for THREE WHOLE DAYS!

That was the first time that I ever went to NYC, and so many details just stick out in my mind from that trip: Eating apple puff pastry and strawberries in a huge brandy snifter with whipped cream on top at the Russian Tea Room, buying a fancy red hat from a street vendor in Times Square, the sobering memory of my dad giving a man on the street our huge leftover deli sandwiches. I remember that man's gaunt face and how grateful he was for those sandwiches. I think that was the first time that I really saw what poverty was and I still think about that man from time to time and wonder if his situation ever got better. Then, of course, there was the magic of Radio City, the show and NYC itself, which is so bright and big and magical when you're nine and you're so tiny and small. I can think of no other vacation that filled me with such wonder!