Winter break is one of my favorite things. It’s nice and snowy, school is out for around two weeks, and the Christmas holidays are in full swing. A fun time to spend time friends and family. New York is no different, it’s really cold in the city and I was always shivering from the cold.

My family and I first landed around 11:00 am, and since it was really “early” we did some research on things we could do until our hotel rooms were done. Just like during the summer, last time when I came to NYC, we went over the Ice Cream Museum. It was a fun experience and amazing for taking pictures for Instagram, and my sister and I wanted to find a museum like that as well. We stumbled upon a museum like the Ice Cream one called Color Factory. Each room was based on the concepts of color and based on the rooms it became a nice relaxing time for us. A lot of the rooms used the power of your senses and based them on color, for example, there was a fortune cookie table with very different flavors connected to the color. The blue ones were blue raspberry flavored cookies (which I didn’t know was a flavor), the red ones were cherry and the brown ones chocolate. So many photo opportunities at every corner. There was even a hallway of scents on the wall. Some of the scents were really weird and off putting like bacon, but there were some really nice ones like fresh laundry, cherry blossoms, and more. Many interactive opportunities, from being able to make your own music with xylophones, to throwing confetti at everyone and everything (I didn’t get the confetti out of my hair for a while, to even going into these small stalls where you can create drawings of the person sitting in front of you. One of my favorite rooms was the room with options on the floor, you start at a certain area and based on your opinions you walk across the room to a certain door. Behind the door is a color that reflects your personality. It’s like one of those personality quizzes on Buzzfeed but in real life. I asked my sister what her favorite room was and she said it was the silent party room, exactly what it sounds like, you are given headphones with music blaring through them and then you just party. There’s even a golden dance room where you can show off your moves, which my dad and sister did not shy away from. Just don’t take the headphones off because then you’re enwrapped with silence. The ball pit room is fun too, painted in a nice and calming light blue where you can definitely be an inner child again.

Even after the color factory, it was only around 4:30 pm, but since it was Winter the sun was already down and my dad tends to eat dinner pretty early. Like around 5:00 pm we put our name for the waitlist for Shanghai 21, and if you’ve seen my other blog posts, this was the same restaurant we went to last time we were in New York. Chinatown is bursting with personality, and it was a fun time to catch up with my family members about what’s going on with them. It was a great night and a great first day in NYC.