Knicks Day
This New York trip has been in the works since we all got to DC back in January. Mikey Balls and I bought some insanely expensive ($270 upper bowl) tickets for inaugural game at the New Yankee Stadium. We bought the tickets January 12th and have been planning our trip ever since then. Well, loosely planning. We actually didn't get our hotel or bus tickets until the day before we left.
We ordered our bus tickets through a company called Bolt Bus. It was AWESOME (except for the fact that it was POURING rain when we got there and we were soaked when we got on)! It was two dollars more than the Chinatown bus that is always late and is basically like a rundown Greyhound (at least that’s what I hear). The Bolt Bus had LEATHER seats and wifi! I've never heard of a bus with wifi before. It was about a four hour bus ride which consisted of me doing my taxes... on the last day, and watching Southpark with Jenna while Mike read his book.
Our bus got to Madison Square Garden just after six. We had an hour and a half to wait before the Knicks game started. There was a stand outside of the Garden that you could play basketball for Knicks stuff. We did that... and WON! We all got Knicks T-shirts! Woot woot! My friend Meg met up with us to watch the game (she's a big deal, she lives in NY). We all had a grand time watching the Knicks crush the Nets. WE EVEN SAW SPIKE LEE!! He was wearing a bright orange shirt and his Knicks jersey over it. The inside of the Garden was the experience of a lifetime. You get a great sense of history sitting in there. So much has happened in the Garden over the years. I remember watching Cinderella Man a while back and the Garden really reminded me of New York in the old days like in the movie. It's all new and high tech, but it's surrounded by old buildings. Throughout the years, they have renovated the Garden, but it's still easy to get a feel for what it was like in the thirties.
We got back to the Hotel pretty late. It must have been around midnight or so. We stayed at a Holiday Inn. It was one of the best decisions of our trip. The people there were fantastic and they had free breakfast! They even had free dinner once!! I met a nice lady at the front desk whose father was a big Yankees fan. She was excited for us to go to the big game and see history. She was so nice, she let us sneak an extra person into the Hotel without an extra charge (hope her boss doesn't read my blog). She also hooked us up with dinner that was left over from a conference. We probably saved as much money as we spent on that hotel room.
Day 2:
Yankees Day:
I woke up with some serious excitement! This was the day I had been waiting on for MONTHS!! The new ballpark! I couldn't wait to see all the new technology, and what changes they made between the old ballpark and the new one. Mike and I thought we were some pretty hardcore fans because we left more than three hours before the game started. Well, we got on the metro and there were already Yankees fans EVERYWHERE! We got to the ballpark and the entrance was already crowded! We entered into gate 6 on the first base side and got our inaugural day pins upon entry. I immediately bought a program, knowing I would cherish it forever! 15 bucks would normally be outrageous, but we were in NY and it is something I will be able to show my grandchildren and they will drool. Mike and I made our way around the ballpark to check it out. There was food from all over, not just the typical hotdog, hamburger and pretzel option like at other ballparks. After trying to catch some balls at batting practice, we made our way up to the line for Monument Park. The line went up ALL of the flights of stairs. It was ridiculous. We couldn't even figure out how to get to the back of the line. Then this bald guy sent from heaven that looked like Mr. Clean in a suit came and asked if I was waiting in line. I shook my head yes and he took me and a group of about 10 through some back passage ways to Monument Park. He made my day. It was unbelievable! We walked through the back alleyways past the uniform pickup and the locker rooms. I felt like a kid again. We walked in through the back door of the park and into the area with the monuments. It was amazing. It had the same basic setup as the old ballpark, but it's still touching to stand there with all of the great Yankee memories within the monuments. Mike somehow got left behind with all of the hustle. I was on my way back to the seats to meet up and I walked past the museum WITH NO LINE! I just walked right in. There were pieces of history all over. There were trophies, jerseys, old chairs, and baseballs signed by EVERYONE! There was literally a wall of balls.
Finally made it to the seats about a half hour before the game started. It was a ceremony with lots of memories from the old park. Bernie Williams played some music, and they announced all of the old timers. I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld with all of the Yankees from the last era that were there (Paul O'niell, Bernie Williams, TINO MARTINEZ... my old favorite:). An old Babe Ruth bat was placed on home plate before the first at bat. Good ol' Yogi Berra threw the first pitch in the new stadium. Kinda wish Joe was still alive to throw it, but Yogi is definitely qualified. The actual game itself wasn't the greatest. It was a pitching duel until the 6th or 7th, then it was a slugfest for the Indians. They killed us. I was a little offended at the end of the game. They played "New York, New York" at the end of the game... I thought they only played that when the Yankees won?! Maybe they decided to play it no matter what for the opening game?
Day 3:
Seinfeld Day
Jenna and I decided pretty early that we didn't want to do the same thing during the day that we would end up doing with the girls who were showing up later that night, so we decided to do a Seinfeld day. We went to Tom's diner. It is the diner that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David used to go to back in the day. It's where the cafe on the show was modeled after. I wanted to keep it Seinfeld, so I ordered the tuna melt just like George Castanza. The diner was really affordable and a great place to sit and chill. There were pictures of Seinfeld things all around, it was great.
The next stop was to the Soup Nazi kitchen. We took the 1 line on the metro down a few blocks to the famous spot where the Soup Nazi resides. He's a real life dude. He is Argentine, and every summer he goes back to Argentina. Well, we didn't get lucky. Either he left early this year, or he told too many people, "No soup for you!" and went out of business. Check out the picture of the sign he had in his window. He is a true soup Nazi.
We checked out a couple of other sites to see. We thought seriously about doing the Kenny Kramer bus tour, but found out that tickets sell out weeks in advance and they were 37 bucks a pop. Kind of ridiculous. Then we realized that we were just around the corner from the Hello Deli. We marched over to meet Rupert! He was there serving food like a regular small deli shop owner. People were coming in and taking pictures, but he didn't care much. It was great. Jenna and I sat down for a bit and had some ice cream. Yeah, we chilled in the Hello Deli.
Got back to the hotel to take care of non vacation stuff and meet up with the girls. I was with four girls for the rest of the trip. Guess what the first thing we did was... shopping. It was actually a great time though. We went to the NBA store! I could have spent forever in there, but unfortunately they closed early. We got kicked out, but not before I got some Clippers gear! While waiting on Angela, Krista and I had a great time watching tourists. People were just as shocked as we were to see the store close so early. They tried pushing there way through the revolving doors... one after another, after another. They didn't give up! They thought that if they stared at the doors long enough, maybe they would unlock. Good times!
Next stop… Time Square! It’s really something special to see Time Square at night. It’s something everyone should see once in their life. We went to the big red steps and stared at the square for a half hour before we left to go get cheesecake. 5000 calorie, $10, pure sugar cheesecake. Everyone felt sick after eating it. With that, we called it quits and went back to the Hotel for the night.
Day 4:
Our last full day in New York. We all got up early to see as much as we could. We had some breakfast and headed to Central Park. I don’t know if you know this, but Central Park is HUGE! It’s so diverse and beautiful. There are rowboats, cherry blossoms, fountains, statues, playgrounds, memorial, and tons more. Our main goal in Central Park was to see Strawberry Fields. It’s the memorial for John Lennon who was shot and killed right across the street. It’s so cool to see how many people loved the man. There are flowers placed on the memorial every morning and people playing Beatles music all the time. It’s funny, everyone unconsciously sings Strawberry Fields while walking up. This was actually my second trip there, and both times, there were crowds of people just to look at the memorial.
You have to see the museums if you go to New York City. The Natural History Museum and the MET are trademarks of New York. We were exhausted when we went to check them out, but we dragged ourselves through both museums. There is so much famous stuff there that it’s hard to take in. It’s a bit overwhelming. I know NOTHING about art, so I wandered through it just to say I did and talked to Kari (the art expert) about it afterwards. We all blew through the MET and Kari took her time; enjoying every piece of art… while we tried to make pigeons explode by feeding them whole cookies.
Chinatown was the last destination. I’ve heard things about this place, but I had never been there until now. Turned out to be exactly as I had heard. Right as we got out of the metro, people came up to us asking if we wanted purses, perfume, cologne… whatever. We followed the first one who came up to use through a false wall into a room full of purses. Kari and I set a goal that we were gonna negotiate the hell out of these guys. We got her first purse for 26 bucks by playing the fighting couple (we like to do this while we are on vacation) and I wouldn’t give her more than 25 bucks. They were asking 40, so I thought we did pretty okay, but Kari learned the system really well and got her next one for 23. Almost half price!
Day 5:
Goodbye New York
We all grabbed a quick bite to eat before Jenna and I had to go back and catch the bus back to DC. We were all chilling a reminiscing about our trip. Well, we got a little too into it because we almost missed our bus! We took a cab to Penn Station and made it on at the last second! Seriously, the driver was walking out of McDonald’s and into the bus to leave! We pulled away from the Mickey D’s and waved goodbye to New York and our great trip!
