New York

We stayed with Brian in New York. He showed us all around, and knew all the tricks to getting on the subway for  free which really came in handy when chris left his card at the house on our last day. On Friday we played a big game of soccer with brian and other irish barmen. The scenery was incredible, this perfect turf pitch amongst high rise buildings and right by the river, queens side of Manhattan. We took a boat into downtown Manhattan for 4$ we saw the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty from a distance. 

Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers 

Brian showing us around.

We walked up and down Times Square before heading into Central Park to watch a co-ed baseball game. A night out in Brooklyn which was awesome. Saturday Brian had to work, so we headed to saints and sinners an irish bar for a full irish breakfast, it was great to taste real sausages and rashers for a change as well as white pudding. We went back down Times Square and wolf street before heading over to the harbour and seeing the twin tower memorial fountains which were amazing. A street vendor offered us tickets to go out and see the Statue of Liberty, naively we accepted as we thought we were getting a good deal. The boat was leaving in 20 minutes it was taking us out around the Statue of Liberty as well as a couple of other stops. Great! Bargain a bit more, 25$ tickets off we set, only the pier we needed to get to was over a mile away. Being the young athletes we are we took off running in flip flops and somehow managed to get to the right pier and were last on the boat. Apart from nearly missing the boat it was awesome and incredible to see the Statue of Liberty as well as see Manhattan from the water.

Serious view

Glad to have made it and seen the Statue of Liberty

Finished with a 5hour drive where my co-pilots slept pretty much the whole way, to Hayley's moms house where we were well looked after again before flying back to St. Louis on the Sunday, just in time for hockey practise. 
Trying to get on top of this blog, hopefully be up to date before I head to Peru to see Sam next Thursday (6th August)

That Time Again

I'm sorry this has taken so long to post, been so, so busy.

So we had three weeks off  (29 June - 18 July) and weren't quite sure what to do. We got in touch with Debra co-owner of HTC hockey club (try and guess what the HTC stands for).

Debra said she'd be delighted to have us and that they'd put us up and get us to help out at their practices. Hayley had offered us a lift as far as Baltimore only 12 hours straight in a car.

We took the lift spent a night in Hayley's house and were shown around Annapolis the next day, it was a beautiful sailing town, the village, along with the Baltimore government buildings were right on the water. Hayley dropped us to the airport where we'd arranged to rent a car for three weeks and were told we were getting a good deal. Unfortunately, things don't always work out and our car hire went from $500 to $2000! We were in a pickle, no wifi and no pay phones, first problem we encountered all trip. We asked other car rentals for prices but as we were last minute everything was expensive, the best we could get was $1400. We needed to do better as no way we could afford that. So we headed on the shuttle bus to the Terminals where

we found wifi and managed to get a quote for just over a thousand dollars. Two hours behind we headed another 6hours North East to Madison.

A few days on the beach and some coaching, well rested we headed for Boston for Independence Day weekend.

Checked into our hotel and navigated our way to downtown Boston. We walked through Quincy market and by the end of it were starving so we had dinner in Ned Divines an Irish bar right at the end of the market. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get our passports as they were needed for entry to most bars. We ordered a cab from the hotel into Boston costing 75$. We got dropped at Fenway Park as there was a baseball game on. There was a bar where you could see into the stadium, Bleachers Bar so we caught the end of the game there before heading on to an Irish bar/club and home to bed. July 4th we got up and grabbed breakfast before the bus and tube rigmarole back to Boston. On the second bus Chris realised he had forgotten his passport so had to double bus it back and then race the bus around its loop to ensure he wasn't waiting an extra hour for a bus back in. Peter and I being the good Samaritans we are left Chris to it and headed for Boston. There was a stop called downtown so we opted for that to try and see some more of Boston. Unfortunately downtown wasn't quite downtown and thanks to poor navigation we had a 5 mile walk, with maybe 1/4 of it being nice and scenic and the rest painful. We did see the harbour and beach and a cool statue.

Quincy market with Chris

Boston Harbour with Pete

We were to meet Chris in Coogans bar for some 1$ drinks before fireworks on the Charles River. Chris eventually made it back to us and we managed to keep to the plan for the rest of the night.

Sunday morning, slightly worse for ware we checked out and headed for Cape Cod for some relaxing on the beach. The problem is we are only in these places once and the local beach club was calling us. It was a cool spot but quite, as people seemed to be recovering from celebrations the night before. From Cape Cod we headed to Daxbury for a coaching session stayed the night with a hockey family and headed to Harvard to  watch the U.S. Men's hockey team train. Harvard's assistant coach Kate was our tour guide for the day and took us all around Harvard town and campus, which was pretty incredible. A night out with the coaches and we went to see USA play Argentina in a warm -up game before the pan ams.

A few more days of coaching and driving and general chilling took us to Sunday where we played and coached in HTC's big tournament. We won the tournament! Coached another week of hockey and managed to grab some private lessons with a few of the kids. Thursday night after a final practise and dinner with Deb and Darren we headed to New York to Brian (my cousin).

Boys on Cape Cod

Harvard Stadium