Life's A Dance: New York City, Hurricane Irene and the US Open Tennis Tournament

Mike had always wanted to go to NYC during the US Open Tennis Tournament, so when it came time to plan our 2011 trip we decided we would go the first weekend of the tournament. We planned this months ahead and little did we know that mother nature would decide to send Hurricane Irene to visit that very same weekend. We knew before we left that there was a big possibility that Irene was going to reach NYC before it calmed down to a a tropical storm. We are from Oklahoma...we have lived through numerous close calls with tornadoes, so we were not going to let a little ole hurricane detour us. We arrived in NYC on Thursday evening. We were supposed to get there about 11:00am, but mother nature played havoc with that too. We made it and made our way to Carnegie Deli for a great sandwich and even better NY Cheesecake.

On Friday we walked over to 8th Ave. to have breakfast at a Bagel place. Most people in NYC eat breakfast and drink coffee at a bagel place. There are many with all kinds of names, but they all serve fresh OJ and have a wide selection of bagels with just about anything you want to put on it from cream cheese piled high to tuna salad.

We then walked on over to 9th Ave to the Salon Hair Rules where I had an appointment to get my hair done. The owner is famous for being able to style curly hair.

From the salon we ate pizza and then walked along a old abandoned above ground railway called the High Wire. It is a really cool place that they have put gardens, birds and much of the nature things that people do not associate with NYC. It is a really awesome place to take a walk. There are so many things to see. You can see the Statue of Liberty on a clear day. You can also see the Hudson River. When it looked like it was going to get close to 5:00 Mike said we had to head to Grand Central Station.

We had to be at Juniors in GCS at 5:00 to eat cheese cake and watch the commuters. That is really one of Mike's favorite things to do. I'm glad we made it and he got to be there. After Juniors we made our way back to Mid-town to the new Apple store on 5th Ave and 59th Street. I can't forget to tell you about going to the grocery store a block north of our place to stock up on food and water in case we were to lose electricity during the hurricane. I was shocked at how speedy they are at checking out people. Believe me, it was much more crowded than when they tell you in Oklahoma that there is going to be a snow/ice storm. We made sure we had a flash light, a deck of cards and we were good to go. I was a little concerned about being on the 20th floor, but the manager assured me that the back up generator would for sure run the elevators. I knew then I was good to go. Irene....we were ready for whatever you had to throw at us. We have a small kitchen in our one bedroom suite and two bathrooms...I love that. We made sandwiches and stayed in the rest of that night.

Saturday morning, knowing that Irene is headed our way that night, we got up and out. We ate breakfast again at the bagel place. I just love their fresh OJ. Then we were off to find a couple of umbrellas...they are always cheap to buy in NYC. Since they shut down all mass transit in the city we didn't go any further than we wanted to walk back. For lunch we walked a couple of blocks east and one north to the Le Parker Meridien Hotel. That is where our very favorite burger place in NYC is. It is called The Burger Joint and if you don't get there when they open at 11:00am...plan on standing in line for an hour or so to get inside the place. There is always a long line in the lobby of the hotel. Once inside, one person scouts for a place to sit and the other stands in line to place the order and you better know what you want when you get to the front of the line or they go on passed you, so I've heard...we always know what we want. LOL I found the seats an Mike placed the order for the food. While I was sitting at our much desired booth a young man ask if anyone else was with us and I told him no, so he and his friend joined us in our booth to sit and eat our lunch. One lived in NYC, but was from Indiana and his parents were from Peru and Puerto Rico and the other young man was visiting from Australia. We had a very interesting lunch to say the least.

We walked back to the The Manhattan Club, our hotel, which by the way is pretty much all up hill. It was misty all day. The streets were pretty much deserted by this time and it was getting darker and more rain was coming. We went back to the hotel and I ran the bathtub full of water, thanks for the tip Connie, just in case we lost our electricity and water. We made one more small trip out before going in to stay and see what Irene was going to do. Well, the winds and the rains are nothing like what we deal with in Oklahoma. Irene had begin to slow down as she came in to Manhattan but she did dump lots of water as she left and went on up into Vermont especially. We never even lost electricity, but the city was prepared and I was glad for that.

Sunday most of the city was still shut down. It took a little while before the mass transit was up and running. They started running some of the trains, but we stayed pretty close to home. We ate brunch at hotel next to ours. Later, we decided to get our exercise and walked down to Time Square which is about 30 or 40 short blocks south. It was fun watching some guys from Australia throwing a football across the street that morning because there was no traffic. There was still lots of wind and you could make yourself look like you were blowing away.

That evening we walked over to another of our favorite places, Iguana. It is a Mexican Restaurant. There was a huge table of people from Brazil there. All over NYC were Police and Firefighters from all over the world. They were there for what they called the Police and Firefighters Olympics. Let me tell you the only ones who came to this event were BUFF. There were men and women and they were all in great shape. That table was having a grand time. I'll try to post a video of them.

Monday we spent the whole day at Flushing Meadows at the US Open Tennis Tournament. I had no idea what it was going to be like. There were people everywhere. There were restaurants and vendors everywhere. We got to go into all of the courts. We watched Ryan Harrison, USA, play in Louis Armstrong Stadium and we watched Marty Fish, USA, play in Arthur Ashe Stadium. We also watched Maria Sharapova. It was a fun day, but the sun was out in full force after all the rain so it was pretty hot. We can now say we have been there done that.

Since we didn't really get to do anything on Saturday and Sunday...we tried to pack as much as we could in to Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday we started with a trip to the Guggenheim Museum. Each trip to the Big Apple we always go to at least one museum. This year it was the Guggenheim.. The featured artist was Lee Ufan. We were more impressed with the building which is a Frank Lloyd Wright building than we were with Lee Ufan's exhibit. There is some art that is there all of the time and we enjoyed it. I'm glad we went but it is not my favorite of the museums. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We went back down to the Village to eat pizza at John's and cup cakes at the Magnolia Bakery. This is two things we always do when we are there.

We also made our way down to Ground Zero. We were there a week before the new memorial was to open up. We to the Financial Center which has a place where you can look over and see where the memorial is being built and the new building that is going up. We walked along the Hudson and looked at an area that we had not been to before. It was very nice.

We left there and went to Time Square to eat dinner and then went to the Broadway Musical "Memphis". We really enjoyed it. The singers were just great. It was a long day and we finally made our way back to our home in NYC.

Our last day in the Big Apple we did something we have never done. We got up early and went down to Rockefeller Center and watched while they filmed part of The Today Show. We even had friends that saw us on TV during the last hour when Kathie Lee and Hoda are on the show. It was fun, but probably won't do that again either. There is a farmer's market down there too.

We saw Bernadette Peters in Follies for the 2:00 pm show. It was good, but I liked Memphis better. The best part was that it was in one of the newer theaters with more comfortable seats and we were able to get really good seats.

After the show was over we walked around Time Square and decided to eat at Tony's Di Napoli. Oh my goodness was it good Italian food. They serve it family style and we were stuffed. We will be going back there when we go back in two years.

We had time to go to lunch at Rockefeller Center before leaving for our plane. I love eating here in the summer. This is where the ice skating rink is in the winter. Great food.