East Coast College Trip Day 1

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Hello everyone it's been too long since I have written anything on this travel blog guess that means I need to travel more. You remember my first blog when I took my son to NYC for spring break, well it's me and him again on the east coast except this time he's about to be a senior in high school and we're visiting colleges. Yes time does fly so it time to get out and see the schools on his list, of course none of them are in Texas so that means time for a trip. We're going on a 5 day trip to the east coast, it's going to be a busy 5 days and not only are we visiting schools we're also going to 3 football camps during this trip.

I worked all day on Tuesday, the whole day I was counting down until 230pm and I got off work it was the normal crazy hectic day and I was ready to go. I get off work, go home and get my suitcase then I drive to Houston. We have an early flight on Wednesday morning so I pick up Alonzo so he can stay at the hotel with me since our flight leaves at 610, yeah that early. Alarm goes off at 4am, Alonzo Jr is not a morning person so he drags himself out of bed and gets dressed then we head to the parking garage, I park the car and the shuttle driver picks us up. We are the first stop on the shuttle at Terminal E, the line is short at the check in so we get our boarding passes and on to TSA, luckily it's early so TSA is fast, one of the advantages of early flights. The flight to Newark is 3 hours nonstop so it's perfect for a nap by the time I wake up we're almost in Jersey but we hit a rough patch of turbulence and every time the plane shakes this little kid in the back screams like he's on a roller coaster. We finally land and we pick up the rental car, off to Morningside Heights to Columbia University for our first visit on this east coast adventure.

I say adventure cause that's what it feels like driving thru NYC, Newark Airport to Columbia University is about 20-25 miles but it took about an hour in ridiculous NYC traffic plus another 20 minutes to find a parking spot. That reminded me why I never drive when I go to NYC, Alonzo said "How do people drive in this everyday?" I don't know cause it seems crazy to me. I finally find a parking spot on 114th St, right around the corner from the school in enough time to meet the track coach at Columbia. We get there for our meeting with the track coach, he talked with us for about 45 minutes showing us around the facilities and answering any questions we had. He answered all the questions we had and since he lived in Philly for 10 years he recommended a good place for us to eat cheesesteaks I'll talk about that on our day in Philly. So after our meeting with the coach we went to the info meeting and campus tour, we learned a lot about the school. Columbia sits near Harlem in the Morningside Heights area, it's a gated university so your on campus inside the gates then once your outside the gates you are in the heart of NYC. The tour and info session lasted about 2 hours, by then we're starving and Alonzo wants to go to Brooklyn cause as he says he belongs in Broooklyn.

So that means we have to tackle NYC traffic again, Columbia to Brooklyn takes about 45 minutes but this time I find a parking garage near the Brooklyn Bridge park instead of trying to find parking on the street. Brooklyn has a more residential feeling than Manhattan, lots of nice restuarants and beautiful homes, Brooklyn has really changed a lot over the last few years and has become the hip place to move to in NYC. I thought Alonzo would want pizza snice we were in Brooklyn even walked by the original Grimaldi's but instead he chose Shake Shack, who can argue with getting a Shack burger? So we both got double Shack Burgers and a milkshake, yes we were that hungry, walking in NYC plus traveling we worked up a serious appetite. We finished eating then heading across the street to the Brooklyn Bridge park and enjoy the beautiful background of the Brooklyn Bridge, it was about 80 degrees in NYC much better than the 95 degrees in Houston. The park is in the Dumbo part of Brooklyn, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, just about every neighborhood in NYC is a shortened name, Dumbo is pretty expensive because it is close to Manhattan. Lots of renovated brownstones and lofts, nice parks and from what we saw it looked like a nice area in NYC to live. So after a few hours in Brooklyn it was time to head to our home base for the next 5 days which is Princeton, NJ. It's been a long day that started at 4am so it was time to rest cause day 2 we're going to Philly to visit Villanova, do some sightseeing and of course eat a cheesesteak. We made it to the hotel about 9, wasn't in the room long before we both went to sleep, see you guys day 2.

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Photos

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Columbia Athletic Office

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Low Library

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Columbia Lion

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View of Broadway from campus

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Under the Brooklyn Bridge

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View of the Brooklyn Bridge from the park

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Brooklyn Bridge