Baseball Trip – New York City

We caught an early train out of Philadelphia last Tuesday morning and headed to New York City.  Once we arrived, we navigated our way through the extremely confusing New York Penn Station and figured out the New York City subway system and eventually arrived at our hotel, just a few blocks north of Times Square.  Our room wasn’t ready yet, so we left our suitcases, figured out where we were going and took off to start seeing the sights.

We wandered around over by the Ed Sullivan Theater where David Letterman is taped.  We went inside, filled out the forms to see if we could get chosen for that night’s show and left…pretty sure we wouldn’t hear back from them.  An hour later, Matt’s phone rang and we found out we had gotten tickets!  It was really fun – we got to see Kate Hudson, some race car driver (haha), and Sarah McLachlan performed at the end of the show.  We also spent some time in Times Square taking pictures and people watching, wandered through Rockefeller center, we walked down 5th avenue looking in all of the expensive stores, and finally walked into Central Park before heading “home” to the hotel.  Our feet hurt by the end of NY day 1!

us in Times Square

me in Rockefeller Center…behind me (sunken below ground level) is ice rink during winter time

NY day 2 we started with a tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  Both were really cool, but I think we enjoyed the tour of the Statue of Liberty the most.  The weather on our second day was pretty gross…it was gray and rainy pretty much all day long…which didn’t bode well for the Mets game we had tickets for that night.  We took the subway out to Citi Field that night and we were packed with our ponchos and rain gear…but as soon as we got off at the Citi Field station, we heard the announcement – the game had been canceled.  Workers there told us it was rescheduled for the next night.  We rescheduled our dinner reservations for Mesa Grill (Bobby Flay’s restaurant) for that night, so we could go to the game the next night and raced back to the hotel to get dressed for dinner.  Mesa Grill was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.  I didn’t want to set my expectations too high, but OH MY…it was delicious.  I haven’t eaten that much in a very long time and I LOVED every single thing that I put in my mouth.  If you ever go to NY or Las Vegas, you MUST eat there.

NY day 3 was devoted to shopping.  Our first stop was B&H Photo…a huge photo, video store that Matt likes to get his camera stuff from.  I’m not all into the camera stuff like he is, but it was a really cool store.  Then we wandered around the enormous 9-story Macy’s.  That place is incredible…there’s just so much stuff in there to look at it’s completely unbelievable.  Entire floors devoted to shoes…can we say heavenly?  We headed back to the hotel for the afternoon just as the rain was starting again and packed our ponchos and rain gear for the Mets game that night.  Luckily though we didn’t need any of it!

view from our seats

us after the game

Times Square at night…INCREDIBLY bright, crowded, loud, oh and there were cops EVERYWHERE.

NY day 4…our last full day in New York.  We went to Ground Zero, but were kinda disappointed…it’s just a giant construction site.  I expected there to be some sort of memorial or something around there.  Next we walked to Wall Street which is so tightly guarded and secured it doesn’t even feel like you’re in the United States anymore.  We also walked across part of the Brooklyn Bridge.  After walking the bridge, we took the elevator up to the 70th floor observation deck of Rockefeller Center and got to see the entire city.  We left Rockefeller Center just in time to go back to the hotel to get ready for the Yankees game that night.  They were playing the Astros…we prepared ourselves for the worst…haha.

the Charging Bull in the Financial District

us on top of the “Rock” – Rockefeller Center – Empire State Building in the background

After the game…our Astros lost

we got off at the wrong subway stop & as we were walking to our hotel…we happened upon this…not a bad mistake.

Phew…I’m tired just thinking about all of the stuff we did in NYC…our next stop – Boston!