Trip Report: Pomme grande

The big trip is over! Here's my recollection of the affair.

We started out on Friday night, headed from the midwest to the Big Apple. The plan was to drive out overnight to minimize the "are we there yet" factor. So, we got in the car and off we went. 7 minutes into the trip, we made our first stop, a turnaround to head home and retrieve our forgotten camera. Not bad! So, eight minutes later, we were seriously on the road, right around 8 pm.

The kiddies were entertained with a movie for a while, which helped, finally dozing off as we crossed into Indiana. The great part about this trip was that we primarily only had to take one interstate virtually the entire way, the toll-infested I-80. We got about 2 1/2 hours in before our first pit stop. From there, we were in business, getting a long ways and deep into early morning hours before our next stop. The driving overnight plan was a good one but had a few drawbacks. One, I should have gotten more sleep the night before - I was up quite late due to some work stuff. Two, it really threw our sleep patterns off on the day of our arrival. I made it through most of Ohio before needing some relief at the wheel, turning it over to the better half.

We ran into a Noah laughing his butt off in the Ark rainstorm in Eastern PA as what eventually turned into dawn approached. It was hair-raising, going up and down the mountains (the very beautiful Poconos) in this stuff. I took over at the wheel shortly into the deluge. We cruised into New Jersey and were on our way to our hotel, getting into the area by about 9:30 in the morning. Crazily, this was nearly to the minute the amount of time MapQuest told us it would take.

Our hotel was quite nice, it seemed like it was pretty new and the room we got was very big, with plenty of room for all of us and a separate room area for our youngest to sleep without worry of being bothered by us. Unfortunately, my head nearly exploded trying to find the place. It was securely nestled on the backhalf of a frontage road on a non-existent highway that you had to know a secret password to enter. Ugh! So, instead of finding the hotel, we headed over instead to check out the Statue of Liberty.

I've seen Lady Liberty while crossing a bridge or two in NY and was suprised at how small she looked from that vantage point. So when we took the ferry over to Liberty Island, I was dutifully impressed by the size of the statue. It was a very cool, but brief, experience. Unfortunately, it started pouring so it was a little soggy making our way back to the ferry. But once on board, we were fine inside the boat.

We finally did find our way to the hotel and were happy to have a resting place. We took the kids swimming in the "heated" indoor pool, which felt like it was not heated at all. This would be the case through the remainder of the trip but the kids didn't seem to mind much, except the littlest, who shrieked a little when entering but quickly numbed to the pain. Thankfully, there was a sufficiently heated spa to make up for the trouble. So, Saturday was essentially spent at the Statue of Liberty and hanging out at the hotel, having dinner delivered in.

Sunday was game #1 on our doubleheader trip, a trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers battle the Angels. The plan was to leave super early and get to the stadium in time to visit Monument Park, an area beyond centerfield where there are tributes to many of the great Yankees to play at the stadium (think Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, giants in baseball history). Unfortunately, horrid traffic, children's appetites and a food court lunatic conspired to delay us beyond the time limits that would allow us to visit this portion of the ballpark. I was disappointed but it wasn't the end of the world. BTW, the Bronx was really not a very nice place.

Now for Yankee Stadium The place is very old but felt really comfortable. Our seats were in the right-centerfield bleacher area, a non-alcholic seating section. And even though we were in one of the furthest rows back, we felt very close to the field and action. There was history dripping from the place, it was really awe-inspiring to think of how many bombs the Mick hit into our area back in the day. It was also fun that in our section, the fans chanted for each player in the top of the 1st innning, earning an appreciative wave or nod of the hat from each player while the game was in progress - cool little tradition. Alas, the #2 & #3 were getting feisty and wound up bumping heads and leading to a bloody nose for one and an early departure for the rest of us. Oh well, at least we got to see the park. We finished the day with some more swimming and a trip to the drugstore to get some ointment for a heat rash #3 had picked up.

Monday was a hole in our schedule so we decided to go check out Central Park. Now I generally am not too concerned about driving in lots of traffic, even if I am not familiar with the area I'm in. But I have to say, driving around NYC was pretty damn stressful and there is not a lot of parking in the whole Central Park area, at least not easily found for us. But we did manage to find a garage and spent a few hours checking out CP. It was okay but I wasn't overly impressed. One of the highlights of the trip was dinner Monday night, where we checked out a neighborhood Portugese restaurant we happened across during our stay. Very authentic, very good, and fun to try something new and different.

Tuesday was check out day and the second half of our doubleheader, although the game wasn't until 7:05. So we slept in a little, packed up and headed to the ballpark area, figuring we'd find something to do near there. We managed to find a movie theater and took the monkeys to see Wall-E, an interesting Pixar/Disney flic. It was a pretty depressing vision of the future but well-written, very imaginative and the kids seemed to like it. Afterwards, we headed over to the stadium early and got there right about the time the park opened.

Shea Stadium was about what I expected. The place has a reputation for being a dump. I don't know if I'd call it a dump but it doesn't really stand out. Built in 1962, it is in the same concept as many of the cookie cutter flying saucer designs that many stadiums of that era were. But since we were there so early, we got to hang out down near the field for a while and walk around a little bit. We spent a little time up in our seats, which were in the upper deck, which made Mount Kilimanjaro look like an anthill. Crikey! The better half couldn't even move once we got up there. We hung out for a bit and decided to head for the road. I would listen to the game on the way back home that night.

The ride home was pretty uneventful, save for some more torrential downpour for the better half to navigate as we came back. I gratefully slept through much of the deep night hours - I would have never made it without dozing off. We got home around 8:30 am on Wednesday morning, where we all proceeded to pass out for several hours (or at least I did, not sure about everyone else).

All in all, I was glad to see both stadiums, being much more impressed with Yankee Stadium, primarily due to the history. I was not impressed in the least with NYC, finding the areas we were in to be mostly rundown and dirty, unremarkable otherwise. We probably just weren't in the right areas but I doubt I'll make much of an effort to get back anytime soon. And the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, as usual marking swimming as the highlight of the affair!

Song lyric of the day: "I'm in a New York state of mind" Billy Joel

Until next time.

Ace