New York and Shea Stadium 8-5-08

After a family weekend, we moved to a hotel in Queens to be close to Shea Stadium. It's been quite an adventure. The Comfort Inn is less than a mile from Shea Stadium. However, it's in the middle of the Chinatown section of Queens. Good news for eating Chinese food (we had a great dinner last night); not so good for being able to communicate (more on that in a few).

The hotel check-in was an interesting experience. The hotel does not have a place to park your car when you check in. In fact, it doesn't have any place to park. So, while I checked in, Nancy had to drive around the block (and got lost). We had to pull the car into a private lot (and block traffic) to unload our stuff which we had to do in stages because someone had to stay with the illegally parked car. It was difficult to get our stuff up to the room. The elevator was up one short flight of stairs so we had to carry everything up to the elevator. It took us 20 minutes to get everything up to the room and not a moment too soon. A truck needed to pull into the private lot just as Nancy was walking out of the hotel after dropping off the final load. We, then needed to find parking. We were told to go to the lot at the end of the street. The lot custodian did not speak English making the discussion of what we needed to do very difficult. Somehow, we struck a deal for $15/day which is a good NYC rate. It seems to have worked. We were able to get our car today and bring it back tonight. One last complication ... our hotel is in direct line of the LaGuardia landing pattern so it's a bit noisy. I can't wait to try to load the car tomorrow.

Yesterday, we went to the Queens Hall of Science. It's on the site of the 1964-65 NYC World's Fair. It was a very well done science museum. Lots of demos and most were very well done. Nancy liked it and she's not into science.

Today, we did the Circle Line tour of Manhattan. It's a very nice guided tour boat ride around Manhattan. I liked it 28 years ago when Nancy and I took the tour and enjoyed it just as much this time. We took way too many pictures. I'll upload them as soon as I can. Here's the link to our pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14772189@N03/sets/

After the Circle Line tour, we rushed back to the hotel, got the tickets to the game and immediately left for the subway to the game. Shea Stadium is another stadium that was great in its day, but badly needs replacement. CitiField is being built in the old parking lot and will be ready for next season. As for the game, the Mets beat San Diego 6-5 thanks to 2 HRs by Fernando Tatis. On the second HR, he did the Carlton Fisk thing waving the ball down the left field line fair. The Mets tried to give the game away. San Diego scored 3 in the 9th on a HR but their rally fell short. Here's a link to the box score: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_08_05_sdnmlb_nynmlb_1&mode=wrap

The Nathan's hot dog at Shea was very good. Good flavor and outstanding sauerkraut. The mustard was spicy, but it was served in a packet. You have to get it at the Nathan's stand near the left field foul pole. I give it a "9". Nancy didn't like the fact that they didn't have any beer on tap although the Coors Light she had met the 'cold' standard.

On to my parents' house in Lakewood NJ and the Phillies game on Thursday afternoon.