09.23.07
Posted in vacation at 6:42 pm by heidihoho7
Today is the end of our vacation fun, a Yankees game. Bela really wanted to hit a Yankees game either this year or next before the current stadium is replaced the new one. We were both pretty excited to hit this game.
The day started out with us walking to the stadium, which wasn’t too bad- it’s probably about a mile. (and as mentioned before we felt pretty safe with all the cops next door). At the stadium, we noticed a sign that said no backpacks allowed, so we ended up doing an extra trip back to the hotel to drop it off. But we still made it back with plenty of time before the game started.
The game went very well, lots of runs, and a beautiful day of sunshine. We had a wonderful day of Baseball!
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09.22.07
Posted in vacation at 8:54 pm by heidihoho7
So Bela and I aren’t huge fans of the city life, which got confirmed once again as we came into the city last night. Apparently NY highways are as confusing as humanly possible. There are many businesses/restaurants on one side of the road as usual but instead of having an exit to get to most of them you have to take an exit and do a U-y to get back on the other side of the road. So we found our hotel in New Jersey fairly easily by doing just 1 U-y. This morning we went to find our next hotel closer to Yankee Stadium and we ended up driving around in circles for a 1/2 hour. Thank goodness we had our laptop with a streets/maps program on it, that we ended up referencing after our first missed exit (that evil ogden ave!) so we crossed the george washington bridge i think 3 times… with many unplanned U-ys for fun. We finally figured out where we were and found the hidden roads that led us to our hotel. (and i still think they are hidden no matter what they say).
Our hotel is in the Bronx, which could be a little scary. But we’re not too scared considering the police station is literally next door. After a bit of confusion we were able to leave the car at the hotel and took a cab down to central park. The driver was pretty cool and gave us a bit of a tour – showing us the subway stop, yankee stadium (new and current) as well as our route we’d take to the game tomorrow for no extra charge (we tipped him well). We’d noticed it was a bit foggy when we were driving around in the morning (which helped us decide what we wanted to do as most of our options included sightseeing), but what we didn’t know is that the fog was actually rain clouds. The driver dropped us off at 72nd st entrance to Central Park since that didn’t require being able to see up.
Most of the things i wanted to visit were due to movies being shot here. The Bow bridge was used in “Keeping the faith” and i think “You’ve got mail” and the Mall area was used in “maid in manhattan” so being the chic flic queen i convinced bela to wander around with me, i also bribed him with bouldering and geocaching. We started off near Strawberry fields where the imagine mosaic is located. We walked to the Bethesda Fountain and it started to sprinkle. We continued on to Bow Bridge where it promptly started to rain pretty hard. We watched a bridal party sprint for cover, which was kind of entertaining. We waited out the rain under a willow tree for a while and eventually made a run for it as it started to let up. We were both pretty wet and thought maybe we’d hit a museum, but they were pretty pricey and looked way too busy so we opted to get breakfast and dry off.
Once semi-dry we headed back to the park to try to geocache. My phone had died so we had a hard time figuring out where exactly the caches were located. I took us on the wrong side of the lake for one and we got within range of another, but without the info on my phone we gave up. We also had forgotten our bouldering info, so we were getting a bit tired of walking around in central park. We headed to the mall for one last stroll through the park.
We decided to take the subway back, which wasn’t too bad. The driver guy had given us a good idea of what we needed to know about which trains. And our trusty laptop also came in handy after we got off the train to figure out where the heck we were. We walked back to the hotel and were glad to be dry!
We’re off to the Yankee game tomorrow then home early on monday!
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Posted in Climbing, vacation at 6:58 pm by heidihoho7
So we went back to climbing for the past 2 days. Our first climb on Thursday was a little bit scary, but our second climb (Rhododendron) was beautiful. I said to bela that i might actually think about leading it the next day (he of course remembered me saying this!) after those two climbs, we decided to call it quits for the day. We headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up as we were heading an hour north to Albany to meet up with Erin and her parents for dinner. It was great to see them and catch up.
Today we went back to rhododendron so i could make an attempt at leading. I felt semi-confident and gave it a go. I felt like i took too much gear at first but ended up almost running out – seeing as i was placing gear just about everywhere i could. There was 1 section where i got a bit freaked but after a few minutes i just forced myself to go and i didn’t even cry, yay! This was a pretty big step for me, i haven’t lead outside in a very long time, possibly 3 or 4 years – maybe more! We befriended a few locals who had set up a few top-ropes nearby and ended up sharing the climbs. So we hopped on Laurel a 5.7 with a tough start and then Double Chin – a really fun classic gunks climb – with two big roofs. We found a black snake as bela was about to start bouldering- he almost stepped on it until i pointed it out! After those few climbs and a little bouldering for bela we were done for the day and decided to get lunch before we headed back to the city.
We’re staying in New Jersey tonight to save a few bucks on the hotel. We’re planning on getting up early to head into the city and hit central park so we decided to order some food. The front desk had a faxed copy of the menu which offered a special for pizza, pasta and few other things we couldn’t quite make out. So we called them up to ask about the special and they seemed confused, so the 2nd person we talked to was like ok you want the special? and we’re like yeah. he didn’t ask what kind of pizza or any thing and was like, “ok goodbye”. so we had no clue what we were actually getting. the delivery guy got here half the fun was seeing what we ended up getting (pizza, spaghetti, mussels marina!)
So tomorrow should be interesting as we head into the city!
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