NYC

My mom and I spent Wednesday thru Sunday in The Big Apple for the Big East Tournament! It was something we had dreamed of doing since I was single digits. Finally, this year we decided the time had come and we made it happen! And I am so glad we did! Since we are both avid college basketball fans we knew we were going to be in for a treat. The games started on Tuesday but we didn’t get there until Wednesday evening. We watched two games Wednesday night and four games on Thursday including our nail bitter win over UConn. Then Friday we spent the day walking around the Upper East Side and Central Park before heading to Stout (a sports bar) for a pre-game party hosted by the Syracuse Alumni Association. Talk about lots of free SWAG! Then we went back to Madison Square Garden for two more games that night. Saturday we went to the World Trade Center Site and visited the Memorial. We also walked to the Brooklyn Bridge, around Tribeca, headed to Times Square for dinner. The we went back uptown to do a little shopping before watching the championship game that night. Then Sunday we headed home bearing gifts for my anxious babies.

My favorite moment: watching us beat Uconn surrounded by lots of crazy SU fans

My least favorite moment: getting lost walking back to our hotel at 1am

My favorite thing I bought: fun earrings from a street vendor

The best thing I ate: Crumbs cupcakes

The most memorable moment: getting off the subway near the World Trade Center Site and hearing the eerie silence. There was a sense of reverence on the streets even 10 years later.

My favorite spot: Central Park, especially after two days of frantically trying to find our way through the mess of over-crowded, dirty downtown subways

The funniest moment: toss up between my mom and I getting cursed out by a slightly crazy, very smelly guy on the subway (we DID run into him), or laughing with disgust as the guy next to us on the train back to Westchester County (where our hotel was) who picked his nose nearly the entire 30 min ride.

I took lots of pictures (but somehow we managed to not get one of ourselves at any point…grrrrr). Here is a (poor man’s) taste of our trip.

  







             


One of the towers is half way done being rebuilt. This is also a picture of the tree that survived 9/11.