lariyasui   Lari's Travels

Cliff and I planned to fly to New York City to attend my grandson, Noakai Aronesty’s graduation from Stuyvesant High School. It was scheduled for Wednesday, June 22, 2022 at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, Queens. Cliff found a flight for us on Sunday June 19, which happened to be on Father’s Day. We got up very early to catch a morning flight to San Francisco, connecting to Newark, NJ. We arrived in New York on Monday morning. My daughter Yvette with husband Erik and 2 kids live in Battery Park City, across the West highway from the 9-11 Memorial and next to the Hudson River. They have a lovely view of New Jersey across the Hudson. 

The first day, I was exhausted with jet lag and while Cliff went for a walk around the neighborhood, Yvette and I got a spa treatment near home and I took a nap after that. Noakai was at camp so we stayed in his bedroom. That evening, we took a leisurely walk along the Hudson south to the Wall Street area where we met Erik for wonderful taco and margarita dinner at Tacombi. On our walk back home, we enjoyed the sunset on the Hudson river. 

The second day, Yvette, Cliff and I took a bus to Chinatown, where we walked around & bought some fresh fruit from the street vendors. We went for foot massage and Yvette and I got body massages. Yvette went home while Cliff and I had a dim sum lunch. When we got home, Noakai had returned from camp for his graduation the next day. Cliff took photos of Noakai and friends in front of his Stuyvesant building. Everyone left, and Cliff and I stopped for dinner at Seamore on the walk home. We moved over to a hotel for 2 nights while Noakai is home for his graduation. 

On graduation day, we took a cab back to their house and Yvette had delicious smoked salmon breakfast all prepared. We packed up all the leis, some snacks and drinks and hired a car to take us to Queens for the Commencement. When we got there, my shoes broke apart, we threw them in the trash and I walked barefoot to the stadium. We met up with Erik’s Philadelphia family. We all went into the stadium and found our seats next to the family of Tomas, Noakai’s best friend. Tomas’s mom, Michelle, had a spare pair of shoes to lend me. Wah-la! what a miracle! The speeches and the recognizing of each of the 800 graduates took 4 hours long. We met at the fountain out front and Cliff took photos of everyone. I had leis for Noakai, Tomas, Michelle, Yvette and Marlowe. It was a festive and happy time together. Then we hired a car to take us to family dinner at House of Joy in Chinatown. Our group of 15 people had so much fun and ate a lot of delicious Chinese food. I gave massages all around. We took a cab back to our hotel.

The next morning the family met for breakfast at Hudson Eats, a food court next to their apartment. But Cliff and I overslept and missed saying goodbye to Noakai, who went back to camp in NH where he is a camp counselor. We walked to Hudson Yards and went up 100 stories to The Edge, where they built a triangular viewing spot over the city. You have a bird’s eye view of Manhattan from Central Park down to Battery Park and views of the East River and the Hudson River. Then we went down to experience The Vessel. We checked out of our hotel and returned to Yvette’s apartment where we stayed in Noakai’s room. That evening we took 8yo on an East Village crawl. First to Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant famous for pierogis. Then to Cafe Mogador, for middle eastern fare. She entertained us with games and she gave her thumbs up for each dinner item we tried. She was our official food critic! We had a lovely time with her. We didn’t have time for a 3rd place… we took her home because she had school the next day. 

The next morning we got up in the wee hours to take the PATH back to Newark for our early morning flight to SFO. We connected to our flight home. We had a short but wonderful trip to enjoy family time in NYC.