Day 3:

Having packed a lot into day 2 we fancied a quieter day involving more sitting down. We had planned to go to the cinema but a casual enquiry at Madison Square Garden revealed that there were still some tickets left for the college basketball game that afternoon. The game was between St. Johns (the home side) and Syracuse (a university from mid NY state).

The arena is an impressive size and there were plenty of fans from both sides who filled out a large number of the seats. There was no obvious segregation with fans of both teams mixing quite happily. Before the game started a young lady came out onto the court and sung the national anthem for which we all had to stand. Its the first time I have actually paid attention to the words… the crowd got very excited about land of the free bit.

I mistakenly thought that basketball was played over four quarters so with 20 minutes on the clock for the first period I felt we were in for a long game. Later in the game I realised that there are just two twenty minute periods which can stretch out to almost 40 minutes thanks to the numerous time-outs called by the teams. During the time outs the cheerleaders would take centre stage to dance or lift each other up. The cheerleading looked almost as exhausting as the game itself as time and again some of the girls were required to balance on the hands of a supporting squad mate.

I really enjoyed the experience and it was worth going to see the arena as well as the spectacle of a live game.

The game took most of the afternoon, after which we wandered round a few shops including the disappointing Nintendo store. The store was small and there was little within to excite – perhaps I am just not enough of a fan.

Our meal that night was at TGI Fridays and I finally managed to finish what was on my plate! The restaurant is very similar to the experience you get in London so perhaps we should have picked somewhere else. They did have a really nice desert though – so nice that Jessica could only eat a small part of it and I had to step up to help finish it 🙂