Rather than be stuck in Littleton all weekend, and because my ticket allows it, I’m taking a day trip to New York City today. Never been there before, so this should be fun!
0600 – The alarm goes off. Ugh. I hate mornings, but drag myself out of bed.
0635 – In the car. Chilly this morning!
0645 – Damn, missed the exit! Silly me paid more attention to the road sign (telling me to go straight) then to the GPS (first exit on the right). You think I would know better than that by now.
0740 – Rest of the drive to the airport was pretty simple. Made it to Logan, got a spot in Central Parking that’s right next to the bridge to Terminal B. Checked in, (eventually) made it through security and into the Admiral’s Club lounge for some lukewarm coffee and stale pastries.
0810 – Back in the Admiral’s Club, ’cause the flight has been delayed. More lukewarm coffee. Let me never again say a bad word about the Qantas lounges back home.
0840 – AA don’t make boarding calls in the lounge, and the monitors don’t give you any useful information (like, the flight is boarding now). So, on the advice of the lounge staff ("The inbound aircraft is on the ground, yeah, you should probably go to the gate") I’m back at the gate waiting to board. We’re now scheduled to depart at 0858.
0852 – On the plane. The boarding announcement was made in a real hardcore Bronx accent. This has to be the smallest jet I have ever been on! For scale, think of the Dash 8 twin prop planes that Qantas uses to do the Melbourne to Canberra run. Same seating arrangement (one on the left, two on the right), but stretched longer. The safety card calls it an "EMB", whatever that is. I’ll have to look it up. Looking at the safety card there is a note at the bottom of the front cover: "Final assembly of this aircraft was completed in Brazil." Should I be afraid of that?
1004 – On the ground! Pretty uneventful flight. Not good for photos thanks to the low cloud. Oh well.
1030 – Outside the terminal, waiting for the Q33 bus to take me to the subway into Manhattan.
1039 – Change of plan. The M60 bus arrived first, and that goes right into Manhattan. On that instead.
1113 – How cool is this: we’re stopped at the traffic lights at the corner of Martin Luther King and Malcom X!
1028 – Jumped off the bus at the corner of Broadway and West 110, also known as Cathedral Parkway. I’m going to walk down Cathedral (part St James, just so I can get a picture for Joyce) and then into the north end of Central Park.
1147 – Been wandering in Central Park for a while. Lots of squirrels, they’re so cute! It’s quite amazing, you can be in total silence except for the rustling of the fallen oak leaves as the birds and squirrels bound around looking for food.
1208 – Checking out the ice skating ring. There is a kids ice hockey game on, and the Harlem Figure Skating competition.
1451 – Wandering past the Empire State Building. There is a queue like you wouldn’t believe to go up to the observation deck, so I’m just going to keep on walking! I’m sure I’ll be back here one day.
1800 – In the AA lounge at JFK. Nice lounge! Still suffers from the same sucky "pay for your drinks and food" problem that all the other AA lounges have.
More pics are in the NYC gallery.