Day 34

Caught the express bus in with Tiff this morning ... and you know you're in the big city when you rock off the bus and through Times Square and stumble across Beyonce giving a concert in the middle of the street!! Walked up 5th Avenue to Central Park and spent the morning wandering in the park grounds - it was another brilliant day in NY so the paths were bustling with tourists, nannies and babies and joggers of all shapes and sizes. Saw some of the sights - Strawberry Fields, Turtle Lake, Belvedere Castle, the Obelisk, Shakespeare Garden and the Great Lawn - then wander back down 7th Avenue to catch up with Tiff and Rudy for lunch at Grand Central Station.
After lunch we caught a couple of buses uptown and across town to Chelsea Piers so Jim could have a go in the batting cages. He got kitted out with bat and helmet and tried out the various pitching speeds of the different cages. As the spectator it was fairly hard to see much difference in the pitch speeds but the fastest cage did have a handy film image on the back wall of guys pitching which lined up with the hole where the ball fires out so was a bit more interesting ... 50 pitches and one blister later we'd had enough.
After the batting practise we headed to Madison Square Park where they had a big screen set up showing the US Open. We hit the grass for a while for Jim to watch some chicks play tennis and me to have a snooze. They also had various tennis things set up for people to try including one where they measured the speed of your tennis serve ... for the record I think Jim's best effort was 94 MPH, although to be fair he had just hit a few baseball pitches so that may have slowed him down. Then we headed back out to Queens and Shea Stadium for a NY Mets baseball game ... which Jim can tell you all about in case I miss the nuances.

Fresh from the disappointment of missing the game the other night and with Ruth happy Tiff had scored tickets for Broadway on Sunday night, off we trotted. We came across this guy who was selling "the best tickets you'll ever get", so we bought them and damn they were good, 4 rows from the front, right on first base...right amongst all the hard core. So after being introduced to the locals as "the New Zealians" the game started. The NY Mets have the best record in baseball this season, but unfortunately tonight they did not show it as they got trounced 5-0 by the LA Dodgers, though we did see a couple of homers, had our first foot long NY hot dogs, and I learnt how to score from my man Louie sitting in front of me. Our gracious NY hosts then let me and Ruth sit in the front row for the 9th inning. The only disappoinmtent was that one of the dozens of foul balls that went into the crowd never came near us, these Yanks were dropping them willy nilly and I was desperate to pull off a glove-less, one handed screamer. It was a great night out though and Ruth even enjoyed it. I recommend getting close to the action at a baseball game if you can so you can soak up the fans abusing players and umpires alike. For the record these boys don't believe the Mets can win it all cos they got no pitching but as they say in America "we gotta believe".

Passed back through Times Square on our way home so soaked up some of the crowds and the neon lights before we headed home.