NYC

We took Jonas to New York City for his DimensionU tournament. It was such a fun place to visit. He made it to the semi-finals, scoring better than half of the 100 kids there. He didn't move on to the finals though. The trip was an awesome enough prize. We stayed with my brother Jay and his fiance Ashley in New Haven, Connecticut where they invented pizza. We went to Pepe's ,it was yummy stuff from a coal fired oven with an Italian bakery next door with delicious ices. We also discovered we like Cannolis. Th first day we toured Mark Twain's house in Hartford, he lived next door to Harriet Beetcher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. That was all in just the first day!

The next day we went to Mystic Seaport on the CT coast. It is a working shipyard where they restore wooden whaling ships and build new ones. We climbed aboard a recreated Armistad. They also had lots of little buildings showing how they did stuff 100 years ago like nautical instruments, clocks, make rope, barrels, and printing presses. We ate on the river next to a drawbridge and had calamari and shrimp.

The next day we took the early train into NYC, rode the green line #6 Subway to the tournament at Hunter College. Afterwards we went to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State building, and strolled through Central Park. The weather was beautiful and lots of people were out. We saw magicians, acrobats, musicians performing. My favorite building was the NY public library huge lion statues out front. We walked up Wall street and Jonas touched the bull. Jonas got a pretzel from a street vendor. It started raining as we got to Times Square, so we went headed back to Grand Central Station to get some NY cheesecake at Junior's and catch the train back to New Haven.

The next day we went to the top of East Rock which borders New Haven to see Long Island and the city. It is all trees with colorful houses dotting around. Then we headed to the West Haven beach where we watched some old Italian guys play boccie ball. We drove around New Haven and saw the old university buildings of Yale and all the interesting houses. I loved all the porches and stone walls.

It was a great trip and our hosts were wonderful- they are getting married next weekend! Mike's parents stayed with the four younger kids who had a great time being with their grandparents. Jonas is already planning on attending next year's tournament. He will attend Jackson MST and they had 15 kids at the tournament.