As you head into the painstaking final week of the semester, most students are beyond ready to return home. Perhaps you have plans to spend the winter abroad, on vacation or at an internship, or perhaps you have yet to figure it out. Either way, you might find yourself tired of visiting the same places and doing the same winter activities. New York City must have new attractions to visit, right? Luckily, it always does. Here’s our guide to some of the Big Apple’s best winter break activities.

Arcadia Earth

At museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can find yourself at the center of cultures and their greatest works. Yet for many, it is likely that you find yourselves appreciating art without necessarily understanding it. Arcadia Earth changes the game by bringing you out of the past and away from abstraction. The interactive museum, currently located in Manhattan, utilizes sustainable art, virtual reality and light installations to create an immersive experience of being inside planet Earth. The art focuses heavily on drawing attention to the issue of plastic waste and the natural life cycles within our ecosystem. Exhibitions such as the “Tumbled Horizon,” which utilizes kinetic sculptures to show the direct impacts of actions on landscapes, and the “Rainbow Cave,” which uses plastics bags to create the landscape of bleached coral, allow visitors to enter into seemingly alien realms that are overlooked as part of reality. At this exhibition, not only can you get a myriad of amazing photos for Instagram, but also a lot of food for thought.

LuminoCity Festival

With the holidays coming up, the city is lined with the nostalgic decorations from street to street, but LuminoCity Festival at Randall’s Island Park takes decorations to a whole new level. Featuring 12 acres of light art, the park recreates all your childhood dreams and adds LED lights for an extra measure. The area encompasses three themes of experiences. From “The Wild Adventure” experience to the “Bifengxia Panda Reserve,” where enormous pandas come to life with animatronics, and “The Lush Rainforest,” which magnifies the wonders of the Amazon rainforest, the park contains a large look into the worlds it brings to light. “The Sweet Dream” experience, which includes “The Donut Tunnel,” featuring a 13-foot-2-inch arc of donuts and “The Candy Station,” featuring lollipops of all sizes, is sure to bring a sugar coma to all who go through it. Last but not least, “The Winter Fantasy” brings to life ice monsters in tundras along with unicorns, encompassing all possible winter-related fears and fantasies. While the trip to Randall’s Island Park may be inconvenient, this festival is definitely worth the visit.

Winter Jazzfest

Like all breaks, the fun of winter break will eventually lead way to the spring semester. The Winter Jazzfest is held in New York City during mid-January and is a perfect way to de-stress and calm down before heading back to Binghamton. Take some time to listen to the artist sampler playlist on Spotify. Not only is attending Winter Jazzfest a great chance to explore new music for those unfamiliar with jazz, but it is also a way to learn more about the nooks and crannies of Manhattan. One of the biggest music festivals in the city, this will surely be something to look out for this winter.