New York Part 2

Tuesday was our long tennis day. We watched tennis for over 13 and a half hours. We had tickets to the day session as well as the night session.

Tuesday was actually quite disappointing for us though. Rain was in the forecast, we found out our super expensive front row tickets were for doubles, and the matches weren't exciting. 

We tried to switch our tickets, but couldn't. The first doubles match was Mattek-Sands and Salfarova vs. Muhammad and Townsend. It wasn't even close and the team I was hoping would win got smoked. 

The next doubles match we were excited about was Makarova and Vesnina vs. Klepac and Srebotnik. Makarova and Vesnina won the gold medal in doubles at the Olympics only a few weeks prior. It wasn't a super exciting match, in fact we went and got food for a good chunk of it. (By the way, these gold medal winners ended up losing later on in the tournament.) 

The last doubles match of the day we were really looking forward to. It was the Bryan brothers vs. F. Lopez and M. Lopez. It was fun tennis to watch especially after a kind of flat day. Unfortunately, it started raining twice during the match and the players had to leave the court and wait. Luckily it didn't rain too much, but the rain definitely impacted the final outcome in my opinion. Before the last rain suspension, F. Lopez was QUITE angry. He was able to cool off during the suspension and came back playing way better and then won. I was sad. Louis Armstrong Stadium is actually being torn down and they are rebuilding it with a roof next year.

Apparently Feliciano Lopez is known for being really attractive. One hyper lady in the crowd was screaming at him after the match asking him if she could have his shirt. She did this several times with no response. She then tried screaming it in Spanish. It was hilarious. 

We were seen on T.V. by my parents, grandparents, and Andrew while in our amazing seats. I was stoked because I finally made friends with the person sitting next to me. We talked a lot. In fact, Andrew wasn't sure if he saw me on T.V. or not because I was talking to some random lady when he saw me.

Can you tell rain is coming?

Being that close to the players was so cool, even though I would have preferred to see singles. We got to hear what they said to each other in between points. Joel's Spanish came in handy and he was able to translate what the players were saying to each other for me. There was one instance where I got too excited and screamed, "out." Luckily the ball boys actually called the ball out and did it at about the same time as me because it would have been really bad if it had been in and I screamed, "out." Oops. I got a little into it.

After our day of disappointments, we knew that the night session would be amazing. Much to our dismay, it wasn't. Wozniaki played Sevastova and killed her. The Djokovic vs. Tsonga match gave us a lot of hope, but ended abruptly when Tsonga retired unexpectedly. We left that evening wanting more, yet exhausted. 

We were quite high up, but could still see just fine.

Wednesday morning we had some time to explore some of New York before the first match. We decided to go to the new world trade center. Wow, it was tall and we went up to the 102 floor. The views were incredible. I got some pictures, but I don't feel they do it justice. This building is very nice and well done. On our way back to the subway, we got pizza because we had been craving it since the last time we had it. (Also, buying food at the U.S. Open is so expensive!)

It's so tall!

This pizza didn't compare to night #1.

We got to see some intense, sickening tennis after that. We first saw Konjuh vs. Pliskova which was another blowout. They were followed by Murray vs. Nishikori. What a match! It turned into a 5 set thriller and Andy Murray LOST. I was ecstatic. Andy Murray is not my favorite because of his temper. In my opinion, he was acting like a baby. He couldn't stop swearing. He complained about a butterfly on the court. Then he complained about a moth on the court. What did he expect? This was outdoors. There was a loud sound that happened a couple of times which pushed Andy over the edge. He talked to the chair umpire at every changeover for a while. In fact, he even had a U.S. official come and talk to him. After this fit, I was so glad he didn't pull out the win. We actually ended up having to leave a little early in the 5th set because we had tickets to see "Wicked."

It was my third time seeing "Wicked," but Joel had never seen it. He seemed to really enjoy it, as did I. Glinda had an AMAZING voice when she tried. She was quite silly, a little too silly, in a lot of the play though. So glad we went. 

We had a good chunk of time on Thursday to explore New York some more before flying out. We headed to Central Park right away. Probably not our best idea. By this point in the trip, we were wiped. We tried walking around and were too tired. Central Park was pretty though. According to my phone, most days we walked at least 5 miles! I almost didn't bring shoes other than sandals which would have been a huge mistake. I ended up getting blisters from walking so much.

Central Park. It reminded me of "You've Got Mail"

We ended up heading to a pizza place. Surprise surprise. Joel and Andrew's boss used to live in New York and said this is the best pizza there--Grimaldi's. We liked it, but we liked Rosa's better. The cheese was very different. (It didn't sit well with me.)

We love that pepperoni is totally normal and acceptable in New York. It seems like here when I say that's what I want, people always think it's too plain. They know what's best in NY.

This pizza place is right under the Brooklyn Bride.

We ended the trip by going to Times Square. We did some shopping at H&M and then rushed back to make it to the airport. Of course our flight was delayed. By the way, the La Guardia airport is the grossest airport I have ever seen. I made it home at about 11:45pm on Thursday night. Teaching bright and early Friday morning was rough.

New York was great. I could NEVER live there though. I can't imagine EVER driving there. Also, strangers aren't quite as friendly as they are here.

Joel is already talking about going back to the U.S. Open again next year. I would love to go again, but who knows when that will be. Going was one of my bucket list items, so now I can die happy. 

P.S- I promise my next post won't be about New York! 

New York Part 1

I have been dreading this post only because I know it is going to take forever to compile. I have so many pictures from my trip and we were there for 5 nights, but hopefully it will be worth it. 

We left early on Saturday, September 3rd. We didn't arrive in NYC until 6:50pm. Right off the bat we had problems with public transportation and ended up tracking down a taxi.

Upon arriving at our airbnb, we were both startled. It wasn't at all what we were expecting and didn't seem to be in the best neighborhood. Our keys weren't where they were supposed to be and when we finally opened the door a strong smoke smell filled our nostrils. We walked into a hallway full of junk. The picture doesn't do it justice.

After reaching the third floor and our actual room, we were pleasantly surprised to see a queen sized bed as well as a futon. We were just expecting one bed, so we were thrilled with the sleeping arrangements. We always locked our door immediately when at the airbnb. One thing we were excited about was a shared kitchen. It was so disgusting I didn't really step foot in it after my first look. Mold, gross dishes, you name it. Also, I was worried about getting athletes foot while showering, so I put down a towel in the shower. This caused so many BUGS. By the last day, there were over 50 in the shower. SICK. This is not an exaggeration. You get what you pay for I suppose. We didn't have a horrible experience because we were rarely in our room. This was like a third of the price of a hotel.

We were starving and wanted some good NY pizza. We had done some research during our long layover and headed on a bus to Rosa's in Queens. It was absolutely AMAZING and worth sitting on a crowded bus for several stops. In fact, this was our favorite pizza that we had while in New York. Take me back!

(I wish both of those pieces were for me!)

We stopped on our way back to our place to get some breakfast and snack items at the store. Everything is so expensive in New York. I definitely don't miss that!

On Sunday, we headed to a YSA branch. It was really small and happened to be fast and testimony meeting. It was cool to hear people bear their testimonies outside of UT. We brought a change of clothes and packed a lunch to head to the Statue of Liberty right after. 

The Statue of liberty was an experience. I'm glad we did it, but the lines were long and it was hot. We bought our tickets Saturday and got to go in a faster line which helped. We also went to Ellis island which was neat. We watched a movie about what happened on the island.

View from from behind on the island.

Picture taken from the ferry.

View of the city. It looks so serene. It's not.

The Statue of Liberty excursion took longer than anticipated and wore us out. We were starving by the time we got back to Manhattan. We only packed lunch. My purse was full of our church clothes all day and my arm was actually sore from carrying so much. We headed to Shake Shack for dinner. 

While at dinner, we decided to watch some tennis on Joel, my brother's, phone. While we were watching, a lady came and started watching with us. She then mentioned that she had tickets for that night and asked if we wanted them. We said yes and headed to Arthur Ashe Stadium to watch Novak Djokovic, the number 1 men's tennis player in the world.

This is how we rigged up watching Nadal while we ate. He ended up losing by the way which devastated both of us. We never got to see him play in person.

Arriving at the U.S. Open was better than I imagined. What a sight. It was much different than I pictured. We were astounded by how much land there was devoted to tennis and how nice everything was. It was definitely a ritzy atmosphere. We found our seats (near the top of the arena) and soaked in every moment.

We got home late Sunday night utterly exhausted, but set our alarms early to head back for more tennis. On Monday we had "general admission" tickets meaning we didn't have assigned seats. We got there nice and early to get really good seats. This was one of my favorite days of tennis that we watched. 

It was so crowded!

We got to see some really great matches. First we got to see Halep vs. Navarro which was an excellent match and made me really like Halep. We then got to see Wawrinka vs. Marchenko which was a thrilling match and involved some serious racket throwing. The last match we saw Monday was Karlovic vs. Nishikori. This match was less exciting. Karlovic was not playing well at all and it wasn't very close in the first two sets. Karlovic is so tall that he really seemed to struggle moving around the court.

Some things that I learned while watching tennis... There are U.S. Open employees keeping people in their seats at all moments. They get REALLY mad if you try to get up in the middle of a game. You can only leave during change overs, so after every 3 games. They take their jobs very seriously. There were people from all over the world and English wasn't spoken by everyone. I was really hoping to make friends with the people sitting next to me, but they spoke German (I think?). Applying 4 coats of sunscreen wasn't enough to prevent a sunburn. That New York heat is really something. We also filled up our water bottles at least 4 times to keep cool. 

That is where I will end part 1 of our trip. Plenty more to come!