Another morning and another breakfast omlet at the Embassy Suites. Boo had some yogurt and fruit and cereal. Our morning plan was the Freedom Tower. I had been to the World Trade Center many times when I lived in New York, but I had never been inside the Freedom Tower. We took the subway downtown, changing to the E train at 4th street.

Once off the subway, we walked outside to the entrance for the Observatory. I told Boo the elevators were going to go really fast, but we really couldn’t tell on the way up. There’s plenty to see during the 23mph, 45-second ride. The nice thing is we were given an iPad when we got off the elevator that we could use to identify all of the landmarks as we walked around. We walked around several times, appreciating the view. We had a food and merchandise credit without admission, so we got some snacks and bought some souvenirs as well. I remember going outside on the roof of the World Trade Center and was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t go outside on top of the Freedom Tower, but the view is spectacular. The weather was perfectly clear that morning, too.

I had bought tickets for the Mets game that afternoon. At the time when I bought them, it hadn’t yet been designated as the day they would retire Keith Hernandez‘s number 17. We wanted to get there early to make sure we got our Keith Hernandez bobbleheads as well as see the ceremony before the game to retire his number. Still, after we exited the Freedom Tower, we had a lot of time. I didn’t think Boo would yet grasp the impact of all of the 9/11 memorials, plus they had them roped off so we couldn’t get close to the names anyway. I decided to let that go until another time. Boo wanted to go to the Lego Store we’d seen opposite the Harry Potter Store, so we took the train uptown a few stops to 23rd street.

The store is pretty impressive. I told her she could pick one thing, since she’s pretty much had me spend a lot of money already. She picked something that was only $14.99 so I said she could pick one other, and that was $10.99. I got away pretty cheap. From there, we walked back to the hotel and rested for about an hour before catching the #7 subway out to Citifield.

When we got off the train, with about 45 minutes until the gates opened, there were already huge lines to get into Citifield. It was a sellout crowd to see Keith Hernandez’s number retired. The lines were going up into the subway station! I chose to go around those lines and found one that didn’t seem quite as long as the others, near the new statue of Tom Seaver. Sure enough, when the gates opened I think it took all of 10 minutes for us to get in, and we got two of the bobbleheads.

I promised Boo a milkshake, so we walked around to Shake Shack to get them and something to eat, then made our way to our seats. To say we had good seats was putting it mildly.

We were 5 rows behind the visitor’s dugout. I got to see the back of Don Mattingly’s head quite a bit until he was thrown out of the game.

Boo was not impressed with this ceremony and dozed off. However, once the game started, other than a bathroom break and a trip to get popcorn, she enjoyed it. Pete Alonso is our favorite player, and he obliged her for her first baseball game by hitting a home run!

The game was tied and Boo was starting to get tired. I told her that even if it went into extra innings, we would leave after 9. I had to stick with that promise, but we were not the only ones. We’d had foul balls bouncing near us all day long, as well as being thrown into the stands. I told her if we didn’t catch one I’d buy her one, so it was one more stop in the Clubhouse shop before we made our way to the #7 train. The man sitting next to me was streaming the game, so I did get to see the Mets’ exciting win and the train went wild.

When we got off the train to walk to the hotel for the night, Boo said she was hungry, so I stopped at McDonald’s and grabbed her a Happy Meal. It was a long day and we were both really tired.