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!
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