Just putting on this mornings drama so far..
Arrived for concierge parking. Seemed all good but had put one day less on the parking than I intended. Might get an extra charge.
The big one. I had filled out my ticket as Rob and not Robert. They said I couldn’t fly. I had to ring an out of hours emergency number which took a dozen time before someone answered. They told me nothing opened until after 8am so I probably wouldn’t be able to go. The only other ticket I could get today was 9pm and would cost another £545. I was resigned to a long wait in terminal 2. We tried once more at check in arguing that my visa and everything else was correct. A phone call later and they accepted it. Then had to cancel the phone call to the flight broker to stop what they were doing but we were through.
Then the passport holder that I put in Callans hand was suddenly missing. He didn’t know what he’d done with it. Searched all the bags and went back to check in but gone. Never mind…
Then had all the toiletries in our bags forgetting the 100ml limit. Had to throw stuff away and have a clear bag each. Bit painful.
Then Harrison got pulled at security for a body search and Callan got pulled for a random bag search.
Anyway. We’re in. Sitting on the plane and about to be pushed back. Weather is beautiful, flight time looks a little quicker.
We’re about to go.
Stress levels reducing, excitement growing.
We arrived at JFK wondering if the drama would continue but thankfully we breezed through passport control.
The next dilemma was taxi or train. We went for train in the end and apart from having to lump all the bags and skis bounced rattled our way to the hotel. It was only 3 mins walk from a station to our Hilton Double Tree.
The next choice was low floor or high floor. Harrison was adamant high floor was the way forward so here we are on the 28th. The room is surprisingly big and although there was the immediate squabble about sleeping arrangements, 4 additional pillows spread down the middle of one of the doubles has found common ground.
We went for an early walk around and spotted a Chipotle which was agreed as our finishing destination for dinner.
It was only a few minutes to walk to Battery Park at the south of Manhattan Island. We got some great photos with the Statue of Liberty in the background out over Upper Bay where the East and Hudson Rivers combine.
As soon as you about faced back towards the city you were met with the imposing skyline. One World Trade Centre stood tall against the bright evening sky.
We dodged the cycles and express moving e-bikes as we walked towards the 911 memorial. We just went for a look as the boys want to do the museum another day but it was still striking about the scale of the holes left in the ground. The boys had lots of questions, some we were able to answer and some gaps were hoping the museum will fill another day.
Tiredness was starting to kick in, as well as Chipotle calling. We headed back for 4 chicken burritos after picking up some drinks in Amazon Go (we later found that to do that the staff had changed all our Amazon footprint to American which mean we couldn’t watch anything… won’t make that mistake again).
Sitting in bed at the moment typing this. It’s 5.40am. Been wide awake since 4am. Everyone’s away and the day is planned. The weather is due to be spectacular again so we’ve swapped the Empire State Building ascent to this afternoon. Looking forward to another day exploring.
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