O Say can you See...

I love holidays because it means no work and all play. Dustin had a four day weekend and I had a three day weekend. We definitely took advantage of our time off to do some more sightseeing and going to new places. To start off our eventful weekend we went on a night ride on the Staten Island Ferry. The city lights were beautiful and so was the Statue of Liberty all lit up. We were lucky because as soon as we boarded, a fireworks show went off behind the Statue of Liberty. So we had a great view of the statue and the fireworks going off in the background. It was awesome.

For the fourth we decided to brave the humidity and crowds and headed down to Coney Island for the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest. Yep, that's right. Boy was it quite the event with over 35,000 people attending. Before the contest we walked around the boardwalk and beach, ate funnel cake and the famous Nathan's hot dog (sponsor and hot dog of choice to the contestants). I'm glad we decided to eat our hot dogs before the contest because after seeing these people shove water soaked hot dog after water soaked hot dog in their mouth, we didn't have the biggest appetites afterwards. Anyways, the contest itself was pretty amusing. We ended up getting pretty close to the action. Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi were neck and neck the whole time and ended up tying at 59 hot dogs each at the end of 10 minutes. They went to sudden death where Chestnut ended up coming off conqueror. It was entertaining and disgusting and quite the unique experience. PS- My parents watched the contest on ESPN and caught a glimpse of Dustin and I in the background. Our fifteen minutes of fame.

To end the day we walked to the Fireworks show over the East River. They were great and the best fireworks we've ever seen. Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday.