Well today was the 4th of July, and to be honest I was a little disappointed; it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. I had images of it being quite over the top; people dressed in red white and blue, 4th of July stuff being sold everywhere etc, but it was really quite sedate!
We started off the morning quite slowly with a trip to the laundromat accross the road - it is a busy place!
We decided that today would be a good day to see a baseball game. I think we made a good choice to go with Yankees (as opposed to Mets) for a number of reasons. Firstly the Mets are playing terribly and loosing most of their games. Secondly, being in Harlem, we are only 2 stops on the train (about 7 mins) from Yankee Stadium, which is just accross the river in The Bronx.
Yankee stadium is huge, but a great design, as Trent told us, there is no bad seat. We had to queue for about 25 minutes to get tickets, but there were plenty available. This meant that we missed both anthems (They were playing the Blue Jays from Toronto, so the Canadian anthem was played also) but there were screens up in the ticket booth anyway. In the end I think we only missed about 5 mins of play, and nothing much happened.
Our first stop of course was to get a hot dog, as you do at the baseball. Apparantly New York hotdogs are the smallest in the world, they measured about 20 cm and are roughly half the size of the hotdog you would get at say Wendy's in Australia. They did of course cost US$5.50 each though. We soon discovered that the $30 we brought for food for the afternoon was not going to last very long at all!
We were sitting at the back of the third tier (in the disabled section as it happens, which had really comfy chairs). As the levels are virtually on top of each other, although you are high, you are still close to the ground, unlike a football field in Australia where you would be quite a distance from the ground. The view was great and the threat of balls and bats flying toward us much less - a good thing if you know how much I day dream, let alone how uncoordinated I am. :o)
The game was really good, it took a while to get into it and work out what was happening but once we did it was good fun. There were about 46 000 people there, which is a good effort since it was about the 4th day in a row that they had played. Can you imagine Crows fans filling a stadium 4 days running? Port can't even manage it for one game!
Normally a game finishes in about 9 innnings; however, the game was tied at this point so they had to play out to the 12th before the Yankees finally pulled ahead to grab a 6-5 win. This meant the game was quite long and people started to leave after the 9th innings. By the end only about half were left to see the win (So they really are a lot like Crows fans).
We headed home for a bit of a rest after being out in the fresh air and sunshine for so long. It wore Phil out so much that it was only the smell of pasta cooking in the kitchen that woke him up. At about 7:30pm we headed in to central Manhattan to find a spot to watch the Macy's 4th of July fireworks.
There were so many people it was incredible! You could barely move as the crowds were so thick. We got off the subway at one end of the stretch that they said was good for viewing. Unfortunately they had already shut off entry to the river side area so we couldn't get down there. Instead we walked with a few hundred thousand others about 20 blocks until we found a good spot along the road, with no buildings in fron of us. At least this meant that we only had to wait about 25 minutes before the show started at 9:20pm.
The show went for about half an hour and it was spectacular. There were 6 sets of firework displays all along the Hudson River, each exactly the same as the other, so it meant that everyone got to see a good view of th same thing. we could see all 6 sets from where we were standing, so that looked amazing. The sound was incredible also.
Getting home again was another nightmare of course as once all those people got in, they also wanted to get out. And whilst we all arrived over a matter of hours, we all left at the same time - crazy. We picked the largest, closest street as our escape route. It would have been 4 lanes wide with large footpaths either side and it was still shoulder to shoulder. Then we had to try and get on a train!
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