Bradshaw History Tour to NYC

By: Arlo Johnson

For the first four days of March, a large group of OHS students, myself included, had the wonderful experience of traveling to and traversing New York City on the 2024 Bradshaw History Tour. Here, I am going to chronicle our trip to the Big Apple and hopefully encourage you and/or others to attend in the future. 

We left the OHS parking lot at 4:30 AM in a charter bus on the morning of Friday, March 1 and arrived at our hotel in New Jersey at around 8:00 PM ET, making the drive approximately 15 hours. When we arrived, we went right to sleep because we had a lot planned for the next day. 

On Saturday, we woke up early, ate breakfast, then went straight to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After exploring “The Met” for a couple hours, we ate some good New York pizza before going into the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which was an impactful experience. Next up, we took a ferry to and from Staten Island, which provided us with a great view of the Statue of Liberty, as well as the skyline of Manhattan. It was then back to the hotel to eat, watch some basketball and hit the hay. 

Sunday morning, we had to wake up even earlier (5:30 AM) to meet our official NYC tour guide, Mike. He first took us to Central Park, which was large, then we hit Little Italy, Chinatown, and Times Square. Afterwards, Mike dropped us off in Times Square, where we had free time to get lunch and check out some sights before heading to the award-winning, broadway show, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”. After the show, we had one last hour of free time in Times Square to soak it all in before heading back to the hotel. 

We left the next morning at 4:30 AM and spent another 15 hours on the road heading home, but it was totally worth it. It was an amazing experience that I’m so glad I had the opportunity to enjoy. For anyone that has any interest in traveling, I highly recommend that you go on a future Bradshaw History Tour! You won’t regret it!