2018 Labor Day Weekend

For Labor Day weekend, my parents and I went up to Queens to visit my grandma in New York. We didn't have too many set plans, so we kind of played the weekend by ear.

We drove up in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. We hit up our regular bagel place first before getting to my grandma so we could eat breakfast together. We had a relaxed morning, but wanted to get on with our day.

So we decided to visit the New York Botanical Garden. I had not been there since the winter of 2014, and I was excited to check out their Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit.

There were so many flowers in bloom, and the pollinators were all abuzz! Here are some photos:

This is a flower from a trumpet vine inside the parking lot.

I think a lot of people feed the fish, because they came right up to us when they saw our shadows in the water!

Bananas!

This is the fountain in front of the Mertz Library at the Garden. Notice that the horses have fins instead of hooves, and the mermaids in the water might be riding crabs because of the claws.

On Sunday, we took the train into Manhattan. We walked along the High Line, which is my favorite park in New York (I actually was living in NYC when it first opened). The flowers were not as spectacular as those from the previous day, but I still got a few nature shots:

There is a lot of wall art near the High Line, and this mural was particularly striking.

This wall art of Mother Theresa and Ghandi was amazing.

This was one of the food stalls at the park. I think "vaina" means peapod (?), but of course with my dirty mind, all I could think was that it's one letter away from lady bits.

Image found here

Afterwards we walked through Chelsea Market to do a little shopping and have lunch. It's always fun to check out the variety of shops and restaurants there. While we didn't buy much, we did have lunch at Dickson's Farmstand; I don't really eat meat, but it had one of the shortest lines, and I hate waiting in lines just out of principal. Then we went to Washington Square where there was supposedly an art fair, but when we got there nothing was happening. So we headed home and enjoyed some bubble tea instead.

This is the iconic arch at Washington Square.

That night we went to the US Open tennis tournament. I had never been, but my parents had gone several times before. My grandmother lives in Flushing, which made it very easy to get to Arthur Ashe Stadium for the night matches. We saw Sloane Stephens and Juan Martin Del Potro (or "Delpo"), so it was exciting to see some big name players. And both of them won! We watched 3-4 hours of tennis, which actually isn't too long considering how some men's matches can go on forever. Then we took the subway one stop back home.

We headed out early on Monday, but this was such a good trip. We packed a lot into a short amount of time!