It's safe to say that this year's March Madness has been ... well, madness. I was one of the select few band kids lucky enough to travel to both the Big East Tournament in New York City and the NCAA Men's First Round (or Round of 32, whichever one you refer to it as) with the Butler University Men's Basketball Team, and let me just start this off by saying that they were two of the best weeks of my life.

The best thing about traveling with the basketball band is that one of your only duties is to play at the men's/women's basketball game you are traveling for. The rest of the time leading up to the game (sometimes this is hours, and sometimes this is days before the game) you have free to roam around the city you're in and explore! Here's what I did during my adventure:

New York City (March 7-10, 2018)

We arrived at our hotel at 2 a.m. on the 7th and were given the whole day off since our game wasn't until the 8th. My boyfriend, Alex, and I have already been to New York for band before, but it was in High School so everything was scheduled down to the minute. This was the first time we got to tour New York on our own time, so we decided to see as many sights as we could see that we have not seen yet! This included tickets we purchased for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway!

We started by visiting every store in the city that originated there like Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue. We did lots of shopping on 5th Avenue when all of a sudden, a snow storm hit in the middle of the day. We were soaking wet and needed a place to get warm and dry off. As we searched, we came upon the New York Public Library and visited it for warmth and to see all of its history.

An hour passed and we decided to leave the library and Uber back to our hotel. We got to our hotel and dried off before going to our show. Alex and I dressed up and prepared for a date night out where he treated me to a fancy dinner right off of Times Square and took me to my favorite musical on Broadway! It was amazing!

The next day, we visited NBC Studios and went on a tour and were asked to come to a Monologue Practice for Seth Meyers! We were able to see Studio 8H where SNL was rehearsing, Jimmy Fallon's studio and set, and the MSNBC news floor before visiting Seth Meyer's show!

After this it was game time and THE DAWGS WON THEIR FIRST EVER TOURNAMENT GAME! It was so amazing seeing all of the Butler fans and team members get so excited over this win!

Detroit, Michigan (March 14-18, 2018)

Because of the tournament win, we secured a spot in the NCAA Men's First Round tournament in Detroit! Our hotel was about 20 minutes away from downtown Detroit, so my friends and I took it easy those days and explored the malls and small things to do by our hotel. One day, we all went to a movie and later got mani-pedis at a place called Luxury Nails. We also got a ride downtown for one night and were ale to see all of the sights and street art, as well as the Canadian border.

Game day was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Seeing Butler beat Arkansas was an amazing thing to see because they were seeded higher than us in the first place, also at the start of the game, Butler lead 21-2 within the first quarter! When we won, we later had to face Purdue to compete for a spot in the Sweet 16 and, even though we did not win, it was great seeing a pretty full stadium filled with Purdue and Butler fans cheering them all on! The atmosphere was so spirited and it made the game a nail biter until the very end.