love-love

Last year for Valentine's Day, I got Steve tickets to the Indian Wells tennis tournament in Palm Springs, only 1 1/2 hours away from us. It's not a huge tournament, but Federer would be playing. Lifelong dream of his to go to the US Open, but mostly to see Federer. I thought long and hard about which tickets to buy: I thought about going big and getting tickets to the finals, but Fed hadn't been playing too hot so I wasn't sure he'd make it to the finals. BUT, I was pretty sure he'd at least make it to the semi-finals, so I put all my eggs in one basket and crossed my fingers for semi-finals. I played my cards right, and we got to see Federer play Nadal.

HELLO.

It just so happened that the US Open started two weeks after we got here in Virginia. I made Steve make the decision on an impromptu trip to NY, it was his bucket list after all. He finally decided we must go before Fed get too old, then he took a while deciding which tickets to buy. My aunt and uncle and cousin were awesome enough to watch Parker for the weekend and we hitched a bus ride to NYC!

First stop, Levain Bakery. It lived up to the hype. That is a cookie people. It lasted me two entire days. And I'm pregnant. That's saying something...

We took our treats to Central Park where we sat back on a park bench in Strawberry Fields next to a cute little man strumming his guitar and singing Beatles, among other classics.

You can sorta see the skyline in the background to the right.

Pizza was on my must-do list. I had heard good things about Grimaldi's but apparently it's a chain that's all over, like even in Dallas. I wanted to try Joe's...

it was fabulous.

Fabulous because it simply was or fabulous because we were hot and sticky and the subways were stinky and humid and we had already gotten lost a couple times on our tight schedule, I don't know if I can tell you, but I do know it was fabulous.

After getting lost some more (partly due to our subway app we were using to get around, and partly to user error....) we finally found our way to the Billie Jean King tennis grounds in Flushing Meadow. 

The view from the top of the stadium, and again, with the skyline in the background.

Steve was again, giddy as a little schoolgirl. This was Arthur Ashe Stadium, and we got to see Del Potro against Layton Hewitt. This jolly drunkard next to us was a Hewitt fan, so we got to learn all of his adorable nicknames for the guy. Sounded like they were pretty close...

I'd heard you can't see very well at Arthur Ashe but we thought the view was great! The weather had cooled down and we actually had seats to sit in, so it was such a a great night!

Next was Serena Williams and some girl I don't remember. We left close to midnight, Serena won. Obvi.

 This is when it gets a little crazy. Again, our subway app gets us lost, so we end up on the streets in the HOOD of Brooklyn at 1am. I'm talking run-down, barred windows, dudes you don't want to take home to momma hanging out around fires in trashcans  HOOD. We scramble around on our phones trying to figure out where we are, calling the hotel trying to see if they'll come pick us up with their shuttle service. They've already stopped the shuttle, so we get back to the subway station and figure it out, get off on the right stop, emerge from the ground to another HOOD at 1:30 am. An old Impala (sing with me now, "...wanna be a balla, 20 inch rims on the Impala) was right next to the subway exit with its windows rolled down, the guy was emotionless-ly bobbing his head to his Wiz Khalifa staring us DOWN. While we're obviously lost, again scrambling on our phones. We keep walking quickly and find our hotel about a 1/2 mile down the road. 

We check in, get our key, get on the elevator, and I immediately burst into tears.

We both slept like babies.

The next morning we wake up and take a look around. This picture really doesn't do it justice, but we'll certainly have nightmares about this place just by looking at it.

 We subway it up back to the tennis garden for our matches of the day. That day we had tickets to the Grandstand stadium, which meant we were kinda free to roam everywhere except Arthur Ashe. The only shaded seats in the whole entire tennis grounds are the ones right there. Those were all taken, so we got to sit in the sun on benches.

We love us some tennis.

We saw Ferrer, who currently outranks Federer, among a couple other peeps that I can't remember. Halfway through we managed to finagle our way over to the shaded seats, and that was glorious.

 My poor, poor sausage feet.

We had to leave around 3:30 to catch our bus back home, so we hopped over to the other stadium to watch a bit of Isner play, then headed out. Steve absolutely loved it, which I absolutely loved! 

We wanted to compare Joe's Pizza and the famous Grimaldi's, and we really wanted a quiet dinner out where we could sit down and not wrestle a 2-year-old, so we fit in one last meal in NY. It was absolutely lovely to enjoy a simple meal together. The place was really cute, but we both agreed that we liked Joe's better.

Then Doughnut Plant happened to be on our way to the bus station, so we obliged our doughnut obsession. I'd heard rave reviews of this place, so I was dying to try it, but we were slightly disappointed. The tiny creme brulee was good, but the peach and the coconut were pretty flavorless and dry. I won't tell you how expensive they were, but they certainly weren't worth it. Boo.

 The bus ride both ways wasn't exciting: we relaxed and chatted and caught up on our phones and Steve watched the BYU/Virginia game on his phone that we had been offered tickets to but had to decline because we wouldn't have been back yet. Good thing because it was on a rain delay for hours anyway! Although it was rushed, it was still amazing to get away, and we can't thank my aunt, uncle and cousins enough for watching Parker! Meant the world!