Brooklyn, Yankees, Knicks and shopping

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Back to a diner this morning for breakfast, where I had waffles and ice cream, yum. From there we made our way across to Brooklyn. It was bitterly cold but walked down to Brooklyn Park for views of Manhattan and the bridge. Sun finally came out which was good, some blue skies! Opted not to walk the bridge though due to the weather and how much time we had.

After a light lunch (fries) we headed back up north for a Yankees Stadium tour. The tour went for an hour and took us to their memorial park, in memory of those baseballers who have passed away, as well as to the dugouts where we could get a view of the field.

The field... was covered in snow, even had a snow plow on it while we were there. Even the seats were covered in inches of hard icy snow. As an outdoor stadium it was a freezing tour. Also checked out their museum, but as a non-baseball fan most of it didn't mean a lot to me!

By the time we finished there and checked out the Yankee store (mostly as a ploy to warm up the hands) it was back to the hotel to start the job of packing everything spread across the room up.

At about 5:30pm or so we headed out for an early dinner - ended up having wings near Madison Square Garden.

Then it was time to go into the stadium to see the New York Knicks play the Boston Celtics (basketball). The seats were pretty good, and another stubhub.com success. We went up to the sixth floor and found them fairly easily, pretty much the centerline but just in the nose bleed section. Can't complain about the seats though.

The game itself, well, it wasn't great. Knicks are on a bit of a losing streak and were fumbling and floundering quite a bit, it just didn't look like they had their act together.

In the fourth quarter it looked like they might make a bit of a comeback, but ended up losing. Ironically, the stadium itself and the atmosphere was pretty good. That being said, I don't think I have ever been to a professional basketball game before. Someone sang Star Spangled Banner to kick things off which I wasn't expecting, think it is the first time I have heard it sung outside of a movie/tv/televised sporting game.

During time outs and quarter breaks they got out the t-shirt throwing machines where they would literally throw t-shirts into the audience. There were some cheerleaders and a few other games where fans would go on to the court to shoot hoops to win money, or kids got to try their hand at mini slam dunks. So overall very entertaining!

The next morning I had set my alarm relatively early as I planned to get in some solo retail therapy. Headed down to 34th stree to the seven-storey Macy's department store. Also hit up H&M before making my way home. Grabbed some breakfast on the way back too.

Got back to the hotel with enough time to finish packing up the bags and chill for five minutes before we checked out.

We decided that we'd head straight to the airport even though we would be early, so it was a bit of a walk to a less stair-heavy subway station and on to Jamaica Centre minus one stop. Then it was a transfer to the airtrain and on to Terminal 7 where we had about 45 minutes to kill before check in, which by the time we had unlayered some jackets and re-packed them and used the bathrooms wasn't really too long.

This was followed by a couple of hours in the Qantas/Oneworld lounge eating M&Ms (they had a giant jar you just scooped them out of into a bowl), having some drinks and snacking on a range of other food.

On arrival into LAX we followed a Qantas rep down to a baggage collection point. Very strange, it was technically an international flight but at neither end did we go through immigration and customs. Collected our bags and walked outside to our pre-booked shuttle.

An hour later we arrived in Anaheim at our hotel, checked in and crashed, given it was about 11pm local... Or 2am east coast time.

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