Tennis Week 2016 - a grand and glorious week (part one)

Howdy, all!  I hope you missed me just a little!  I had a great time with my mom last week for Tennis Week.  Because plane fares are incredibly expensive, we had to adjust my mom's schedule, so this year we only had one day to wander around town before going to the US Open qualifying tournament.  Let me share some of the highlights of our fun...

dumb.

Monday, , my mom's flight was late and there was a nightmare traffic jam in and out of LaGuardia.  You can read all about it online - apparently, people were getting out of their cabs and walking along the highway to try to make their flights on time. Generally, my mom will get in pretty early in the morning, I'll send a car service to pick her up, and she's at my place within a half hour or so.  It took almost two hours for her to reach my place this time, which was a drag.  Especially since my building took the elevators out of service.  Gah.  So when my mom finally arrived, we decided to take her suitcase out to breakfast with us, then we went to the grocery store.  Happily, by the time we finished at the store, my elevator was back. We puttered around my apartment for a few minutes then headed out for some sightseeing.

Being from the midwest, my mom is a fan of shopping malls.  I admit it.  When she heard about the new Clearfield Mall that opened near the World Trade Center/Freedom Tower area, she wanted to check it out.  It's a bit of a trek from my place, but we got there pretty easily. I haven't been downtown in a while, so it took me a minute to figure out where we needed to go, but we finally found it.  Wow.  It looks like something out of Logan's Run or 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It's all white and bright, with ginormous ceilings and a sterile look.  The stores are all upscale, so there wasn't much shopping for us to do.  We especially wanted to get a look at the new Eataly outpost - Mom and I had gone to the Chelsea location once and it was so packed, we didn't get it.  It took us a bit (and a couple of stops to ask mall employees) to find it and when we finally did, we were annoyed to see a CLOSED TODAY sign.  We couldn't believe it!  Neither could the mall employees my mom had to tell on our way back downstairs.  Since we were now a little peckish, we walked across the vast expanse to the other mall on the other side of the street to a food court.  We bought some cookies and had some delicious ice cream. Mom and I do love us some ice cream.

After we had looked around the malls, we thought about walking down to the seaport and getting the Staten Island Ferry.  But it was pretty warm, and maybe a little too far, so we settled for wandering around the water on the Battery Park walkway and going into some grocery stores when we needed a/c (did I mention my mom is also a fan of grocery stores?).  When we were done downtown, I suggested to Mom that we ride the subway all the way back through Queens and check out Forest Hills.  I had gone there for a tennis match a couple of weeks ago and found it lovely.  I thought Mom would like it, too.  It was nice to sit down for a bit on the subway and it took us a little under an hour to get from Battery Park to Forest Hills.  We did a little shopping, had a snack at Shake Shack, and just looked around at the lovely houses.  We stopped and chatted with a resident, who may or may not have been at Woodstock and is still feeling the effects, about his gorgeous dog and generally had a quiet walk around a new-to-us neighborhood.  I had a walking tour that I wanted to take, but I stupidly left it in my apartment, so I guess we'll just have to do it another time.  After all that walking around in the sunshine, we were pretty tired, so we called it an early night.

new roof!

Tuesday morning, we set off for the tennis pretty early.  I have the US Open app on my phone, so we could see the schedule and decide where we wanted to go ahead of time. We were both a little nervous about going through the security line - it seems like every year brings a new issue, but this year was a breeze. Everyone was friendly and smiling, yet thorough in checking our bags.  It was good.  In the past, Mom and I would like to watch the pros practice in the Grandstand, but this year, there's a new Grandstand. Happily, they made the Old Grandstand a practice court but they also played some qualifying matches there.  We settled in there for our first match of the day. We watched Montanes from Spain take on Mitchell from Australia. Poor Mitchell was a tad overmatched, and his serve was completely off, so he lost pretty quickly.  There were some nice rallies, but they were few and far between.  Montanes won easily and we decided to go watch a young American on Court 17. When we got over there, though, there was a huge line to get in and there weren't many shady seats left, so we decided to go to Court 11 instead to watch American Ryan Harrison. We watched the end of the women's match beforehand, and then found some good seats to watch Harrison.  Unfortunately, it was now a really warm part of the day and there really isn't any shade at Court 11, so we only made it through the first set, which we were happy to see Harrison win in a tiebreak, after being down a break of serve earlier in the set.  

Nadal

Once we left Court 11, we decided to sit in the shade of the food court area and have our lunch.  We had packed some snacks and a peanut butter bagel, so we relaxed and had lunch.  I was disappointed to find out that my favorite beverage, the iced tea from the Lavazza booth, isn't there anymore, they only sell coffees.  I like iced coffee, but it isn't my go-to outdoor-in-the-sun beverage, unfortunately, so I just stuck with water.  I will miss my iced teas. After lunch, we wandered over to Armstrong stadium to see what pros were practicing and much to my mom's supreme joy, we got to watch Nadal practice. He is her absolute favorite.  We didn't stay too long, because, again, there's no shade in there, but we sat and got some good photos and she enjoyed seeing him. When we couldn't take the sun anymore, we went back to the old Grandstand and watched a match between Marco Chiudinelli from Switzerland and Blaz Rola from Slovakia.  This was quite a good match, going three sets, and both players had some quality shotmaking.  I think winning the first set in a tiebreak took a lot out of Rola, though, and Chiudinelli came back to win in three. But it was a good match and since we were pleased, Mom and I decided to call it a day. We stopped and got some ice cream at the little concession stand outside the stadium, where the ice cream is priced approximately 3000% cheaper than the ice cream inside the stadium.  Ice cream that's less expensive always tastes better to my mom.  :)

I think that's enough for now.  Stay tuned for my report of days two and three of tennis, plus we made a special trip to see a special play starring a special friend!