We have been to three games which is more than I've ever attended in a season. We made a donation to the athletic department of the UW this year and were given a couple of passes to the new baseball clubhouse. It's really nice to watch the games out of the cold and wind. That's the main reason we have not attended more games until now.
We had a great time in New York. Kind of a quick trip in which we both worked on Monday, flew it on a redeye and arrived Tuesday morning, three quick days in New York and left early enough Friday morning to work part of the day! We will be exhausted by this evening. Fortunately we had enough frequently flyer miles to fly first class round trip which made the overnight flight much more tolerable!
As we have been doing lately while traveling we rented a condo as opposed to staying at a hotel. I've become quite fond of traveling this way. There is something about staying in a neighborhood in an apt, house or condo that provides a different perspective that we really enjoy. We have done this in New York once before (stayed in Brooklyn and would not do that again), San Francisco in the Castro, West Hollywood and now the Central Park condo pictured below.
We realized last time we were here that when traveling to New York you really need to stay in Manhattan. I saw this on the subway and thought it was hilarious and oh so true!
Twice we have stayed over in Brooklyn (last time we were here and when I ran in the New York Marathon) and the three other times that I can think of that we were in New York we have been in Manhattan. I really wanted to stay near Central Park for the running it offers.
I've ran in Central Park several times before but we have never stayed so close that I could run entirely in the park as opposed to spending a great deal of time running to just get to the park. I had two good days of running, 7.5 miles one day and 8.5 the next. The first day I ran the entire perimeter of the park which has been my list of runs that I've wanted to do. I love running with the GPS and then having a map of my run.
Kinda geeky but fun. The second run was on the trails throughout the park. I've never explored the entire park like that before. It was a great way to get a feel for the entire park and the different neighborhoods that surround it. The condo was in a beautiful old building right across the street from the the entrance from where the carriage rides originate.
The unit we stayed in was on the 16th floor and although it did not have a park view it was quite nice. It was small, 560 sq. ft. but it had everything we needed.
I loved being in a building with a doorman. I did of have to open the door once! Everyone from the doorman to the concierge were very helpful.
I found myself wondering what it would be like to live in the building and have the park at my disposal. As I often do while running I cooked up a new idea for our retirement. I've written about hiking the Appalachian Trail which I want to do early in our retirement while we are still young enough to do it! When I was younger I use to dream about living in a different city for a year or so and move on to the next. Well that's not going to happen so the idea I cooked up (and Kent thinks is a good idea) is to take an entire year and travel to 12 different cities, six of Kent's choice and six of mine and stay for a month in each location in a rented condo/house and get a feel for living there. Although I'm not nearly close to selecting my final cities, New York, Paris, London, Sydney, Berlin, Bali, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, St. Thomas, and Florence all jump right out! Ironically that's exactly 12 so I'll have to get Kent to select at least half of the ones above to get all my top choices in! Any suggestions? Its a good thing we are savers!
On our final saying New York we traveled to the area around NYU.
I wanted a new shirt from NYU and to the Village to visit Gym Sports Bar. We discovered it Gym in LA and when we realized there was one in NY we had to track it down. Great crowd!
We found a great Italian place for dinner and ended the evening with the play Other Desert Cities.
If I were to rate this trip on a scale from 1-10, I'd have to give it no less than a solid 9. Had the Huskies won it may well have been a 10!
Later and happy travels -
Jim
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