New York City!!!

New York City can now be checked off the list!! I got to enjoy a wonderful vacation with a couple dear friends and fulfill a dream of mine to go to the US Open.  Ashlee and I have been trying for years... literally, and this year it finally happened! So fun!

Saturday, August 24^th

We arrived on Saturday and after checking into our hotel (about two blocks south of Central Park- such a great location!!) we decided to explore around our hotel.  We walked to Time Square, to the temple, to the M&M Store, to a candy store, and just soaked it all in!

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Fitting that the nurse would find a bag of blood in the candy store.  Gross!

Don't worry, we also found a giant box of nerds!

Sunday, August 25^th

-         We went to the 11am Sacrament Meeting.  Church is held in the same building as the temple and it was the same ward as one of  Deanna’s friends who recently moved there.  I love how small the world is through the church.  After church we went out and about to explore the city.  We took the metro down to Lower Manhattan and then headed north walking back towards our hotel.  Here is what we did along the way:

          

o   Battery Park – Statue Cruises

o   Ferry to Staten Island past the Statue of Liberty

o   Ground Zero Memorials  

o   Walked Wall Street

o   NYSE

o   Brooklyn Bridge

o   China Town  - Crazy people who got in your face and kept saying “Purse” and “Hello!”

o   Little Italy 

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This was significant to me, because this was my contract!! Pretty cool!

Got to love the wind blown look on the boat! It was such a warm day that the breeze felt great!

This was the memorial at ground zero.  It was really well done.

Random art!

We took a really smelly way through this stairwell to get to the Brooklyn bridge.

We walked a little ways on the Brooklyn bridge- pretty fun!

There are hot dog stands every where in NYC.  In this little city block I think we counted about 11.  There is definitely not a shortage of places to eat there!

We walked through China Town and then made our way to Little Italy where we stopped for dinner. It was fun to eat outside right on the street!

Monday, August 26^th

-          Monday started out kinda chilly and rainy.  We started our day by going to the filming of the today show and they moved it inside because of the little drizzle.  It was fun to be on site and see the news anchors constantly on their cell phones when they were not on the air.  

\   Having fun in FAO Schwarts, 

Gawking at Tiffany's diamonds,

and a taking a fly-by picture of the Empire State Building... literally! We were to meet up for lunch with Deanna's friend at a place on 56th St.  We were already running late when we made it to the Empire State Building located at 34th St.  So, we snapped a picture and then ran up 22 blocks in the now hot and muggy weather of NYC.  Good times!

We got discount tickets to Broadway's musical, Newsies, so that is what we did Monday evening.  It was awesome! So fun!

Tuesday, August 27^th

-          Now for the main event! The reason we went to NYC was to go to the US Open.  It was amazing!

       My good friend, Ashlee, met up with us Tuesday morning so we could all together.  We were making our way to there on the metro when the metro stopped and said there was a problem ahead.  Hmm... do we wait it out on the train or hop of and start walking the rest of the way to the Flushing Meadows? We opted to walk the last 2 miles since it was such a beautiful morning.  Funny thing was that was two miles walking through Queens! Lets just say we got to see a part of town we were not planning on seeing.  

I was so happy!! After seeing Venus Williams on the practice court, doing a little shopping, and site seeing we headed to our seats. We were in Arthur Ash Stadium and we got to see 3 matches.  The pictures makes it look like we were really far away, but we had fantastic seats!

 Here are the three matches we saw:

§  P. Kvitova def M. Doi  (6-2, 3-6, 6-1)

§  C. Wozniacki def Y. Duan (6-2, 7-5)  

and the cherry on top of a wonderful time thus far...

§  R. Federer def G. Zemlja (6-3, 6-2, 7-5) 

Dream come true to see Federer play! His match was postponed from the day before due to rain, so we got to see him play.  It was awesome!

We got back from the Open with time to put on a skirt and head out the door again.  We did a session in the temple that evening.  It was a fantastic way to end a wonderful day!

After the temple we went to grab a bite to eat.  Don't worry, this did not tempt us in the slightest.  I can only imagine that you get what you pay for!

Wednesday, August 28^th

-         Deanna and I stayed up chatting until 2am, so it was a little rough getting up to go run, but we did! We started our day by running through Central Park.  It was awesome! We went up one way and turned around and headed back, but since there are so many paths to take we never saw the same thing twice.  We ran about 4.5 miles in all, but we stopped to play and took pictures along the way.

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We met up with Ashlee for lunch at a pizza place in Time Square before heading to the airport. Our trip had to come to an end at some point.   

We packed a lot in during the few days we were there.  It was such a great trip with so many great memories.  I'm so glad I have great friends like Ashlee and Deanna! These girls are awesome!