New York Day 3

Hi for the last time from New York, everyone!  Today was a full day and a fun day.  We started in Central Park.  We went to a grocery store and bought some sandwiches, drinks, and black and white cookies.  When we left the store, Katie noticed that the cashier hadn't charged us for my sandwich.  We decided to be honest and go back in to pay for the sandwich.  After listening to our story a couple times (presumably because she couldn't believe what was going on), she said, "You guys aren't from around here?"  I wonder what made her think that. : )  We took our sandwiches, drinks and cookies to the Sheep Meadow of Central Park, and had a really nice picnic in the park.  Yesterday, we saw this really weird guy with his running shorts rolled up to the extent that his shorts looked like those things sumo wrestlers wear.  He was massaging his abs and strutting back and forth in Central Park.  Fortunately, he wasn't there today to ruin our picnic.  After lunch, I was having some stomach pains, and Katie thought it might have been because the black and white cookie wasn't getting along in my stomach.

From there, we did some walking in Central Park and soon caught the subway up to the Bronx for the afternoon Yankees game.  Yankee Stadium is really nice, and the game was fun.  We were having a little trouble staying awake, as we still haven't totally caught up on our sleep. (We're hoping that serves us well on our 14 hour flight tomorrow!)  However, we did note that it seems to be a Johnson tradition to fall asleep at baseball games.  The game was pretty good... it was 2-0 New York for most of the game, until Seattle tied it up in the 8th.  The Yankees went right back up, though on A-Rod's 595th home run.  Yankees won 4-2.  We followed the jubilant crowd out of the stadium, but didn't follow them for long on the train.  Instead, we took a different route, which took us to Tom's Restaurant, the restaurant from Seinfeld.  On the way there, I experienced Katie's worst fear, as a pigeon flew up into my face.  It obviously, startled me, which gave Katie a good laugh.  Katie thought I "freaked out", but really it was more of a startle.  The story will likely be different depending on who you ask to tell it.  We shared a quick milkshake at Tom's, and took the train back to Broadway for our second crack at the Wicked Lottery.  There were way more people out today for the lottery, and for the second day in a row, we were one entry away from winning.  Yesterday, the people in front of us in line won.  Today, the people who were behind us in line won.  One family had both of their kids' names get drawn, and promptly sold one pair of tickets to someone for $100 because they didn't have enough cash on them for 4 tickets.  We were disappointed... not that we had our hopes up terribly high, but it would have been nice to go to Wicked.

We then had the idea that ESPN Zone on Times Square might be showing the Rider game, as it was being broadcast in the states on the NFL Network.  When we got there, though, there was a sign on the door saying they had decided to shut the place down as of a couple weeks ago.  We decided to trek back down to Little Italy, where we were for part of our pizza tour yesterday, for a pasta supper.  Little Italy is so great!  It used to be huge, but now it's basically only a four block stretch, as Chinatown has basically taken it over.  What it lacks in size, though, it definitely makes up for in awesomeness.  There were so many fantastic smells emanating from everywhere, it was very difficult to choose a restaurant.  (It's difficult for us at the best of times!)  We settled on a place, and enjoyed the best pasta meal ever.  It was pretty fantastic.  Katie even got by without feeling sick from the alfredo sauce, which tends to be the norm for her, unfortunately.  From there we caught the train back to Newark and our hotel.  We watched the game on the TSN site after it was posted.  What a game!  Yay Riders!!

Tomorrow we'll get up bright and early, and trek all the way over to Queens for our flight out of JFK.  It'll be an extremely long one, but we think what's at the other end of it will be worth it.  I'm sure it will be a bit of a culture shock to go from a place like New York City to a place like Botswana in the span of a few days.  When we got to New York the other day, we were anxiously watching the scores as we walked through the city to see who was going to play before us at the World Cup.  We're going to see Paraguay and Spain.  Perhaps we should wear red, as that will cover both sides!

We're not sure what the internet situation will be like in Africa.  According to their website, the lodge we'll be at in Pretoria does have internet, but we'll see how things work out.  We'll do our best to update this, as it's been a great travel journal for us, and hopefully fun for you to read.

Happy Canada Day from New York!

D&K