NYC

It has been a few days since I have blogged and that is because we have been out of town and very busy!

Thursday after school we left for Verona, NY, so I could attend the New York State Physical Education Conference at Turning Stone Casino and Resort. We stopped in Syracuse to take Corey and his housemate, Mike, out to dinner. We had a good dinner and enjoyed our short time together.

On Friday I atttended my conference and came away with some good info and had a chance to see some PE people that I haven't seen in a while. While I was at my workshops, Jim had a phone meeting for work, went for a run and surfed the web while waiting for me. As we were on our way out of Turning Stone we had to stop and be amazed at the gingerbread village that was under constuction in the lobby area. It made my meager efforts look pitiful!


Later Friday afternoon we continued east on the Thurway, heading for New York City. Corey and some of his teammates were running in the Bronx on Saturday morning and we were glad to have the opportunity to see him run. We drove the car as far as Poughkeepsie where we parked the car and rode the train into the city. That is the way to go! Parking can be wildly expensive and driving is awful in the city so we were glad to use public transportation. We pulled into Grand Central Station about 7:30 PM and made the 6 block walk to our hotel. I talked the Radisson Hotel clerk into giving us a complimentary upgrade which has been nice. Friday night we went to a nice Italian restauarant for a late dinner.

This morning we took the subway to VanCortland Park where Corey and his teammates were running in the IC4A race.
Unfortunately Corey and most of his teammates did not have great races, so they were all a bit disappointed. However most of them were returning to SU and then re-boarding the vans for a trip to Indiana to see the "A" team run in the NCAA national championships. Corey and some of his buddies were consoled by the fact that Lloyd's World Famous Carrot Cake store was located right across the street from the race course and some of the guys lifted their spirits with a slice, and others needed a whole cake to do the job!! It was delicious carrot cake!


After saying good bye to Corey we took the subway back to the Times Square area. We thought we would try to get some discounted tickets to a Broadway show for tonight, but they did not go on sale until 3 PM. It was only 1:30 and we realized that there were Broadway shows starting at 2PM and the ticket line was fairly short. So we stood in line with a first choice and second choice in mind. Our first choice was Mary Poppins, but there were only single seats, no where near each other available so we asked about ticket availability for our second choice, White Christmas and we were able to get 2 good seats for that show.
So with a half hour to go, we had to find Jim some lunch (I was still working off my carrot cake piece) and use the bathrooms. But we got to our seats with 7 minutes to spare. We had "Sally" seats, meaning that they were right down in front, actually in the second row, on the left edge of the stage. Now normally I like to sit higher up but the stage was small enough that we were able to see everything and enjoyed seeing the action up close. The show was GREAT! It was different enough from the movie with Bing Crosby and Danny Kay that I didn't find myself comparing the 2 shows. The singing and dancing was spectacular and I smiled through the whole thing. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

For dinner tonight, Jim surfed the web and found a Mexican restaurant that got good ratings and advertised that they had the best margaritas. So off we went for a short walk to this place. The sign in the window said that the margaritas were so lethal that you may forget to eat! Jim had two! But we did not forget to eat and had another great meal. We walked the long way back to our hotel to walk off the margaritas and the dinner.


We will head back to Poughkeepsie tomorrow to retrieve our car and drive home. We've had a good time in NYC.

Hope all is well.