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Well, what a day!!!!!
‘Happy Birthday’ day for Joy and it was to feature a 30 minute helicopter ride over New York and then an afternoon of ‘shopping’ at the Woodbury Common Outlet Centre.
And that is exactly what happened, believe it or not!!!!
Unfortunately the day didn’t get off to the smooth start as planned.
We got up after a good sleep ………at last………and had a muffin and cuppa breakfast downstairs on 4
th floor. (It’s free, or part of the room price so you don’t turn it down….do you??)
We then planned our journey to Pier 6 and the heliport. Had it all worked out!!!! Walk down to the Times Square metro station and catch the 2 train down the line and change to the 1 train and walk the short distance to Pier 6. Nice and simple!!!!!except ‘dickhead’ me too the wrong turn outside the hotel and headed off in completely the wrong direction, even though we had done the same walk 3 times already since arriving. Took about 4 blocks before I realised we were seeing things we hadn’t seen before and figured
out we were heading in the wrong direction. Got the map out and figured out which way we had to go to get to the metro and of course had got horribly disorientated and again turned the wrong way. Finally figured out that we shouldn’t be seeing the River in front of us and stopped and had another go at getting it right. By this time we were both getting a bit ‘hot under the proverbial collar’ not just from getting lost but from a very warm and muggy day. Got flustered but finally made the metro only to get more confused b y the train we were trying to catch not being where I thought the signs said it should be.
Time was starting to get tight as we had to check into the heliport 30 minutes before our flight time or no flight.
We got to the heliport at Pier 6 right on 10.30am for our 11am flight. Talk about hot and bothered and incredibly angry with myself for almost stuffing things up for Joys special outing.
Got sorted and checked in and taken out to the helicopter straight
away. What an incredible place. Helicopters coming and going all the time and looked to be about 10 – 12 operating, Busy, busy. We headed out to our machine and noted that our pilot was a lady!!!and not just any lady, as we found out once buckled in. She was Australian with a Kiwi husband from Auckland via Christchurch. How’s that for a small world. We had a Canadian father and son and a German girl from Cologne on the flight with us and off we went for 30 minutes of MAGIC!!! We saw everything in and around the centre part of NYC….flew out over the Statue of Liberty and out over Staten Island, Coney Island and New Jersey and then back over Manhattan, over Yankee Stadium and heaps more. It was fantastic and after the bad start to the day finally came right well and truly. It puts a completely different perspective on things when you see it from the air, especially in a chopper.
Will try to put some of Joy’s photos up with this so you can maybe get some of the ‘feel’ for what we saw.
After the flight we
made our way back up to Times Square and found the bus going to Woodbury Common Outlet Centre at the Port Authority Bus Station……..and believe me when I use the term bus station!!!!!! It was about 4 floors of buses going everywhere and was hard to take in the sheer size of the operation. It was massive.
Anyway to cut a long story short, got tickets and headed off for the hour long trip on the bus. Like the time we went outlet shopping in Los Angeles in 2008 and drove ourselves there using the rental car GPS and actually had no idea where we actually were, this time was the same deal. I know we went down a tunnel under the River and through New Jersey because I spotted the ‘Metlife Stadium’, home of the NY Giants and NY Jets NFL teams, off in the distance but apart from that we whizzed along the freeways at full speed until we ended up at Woodbury Common after an hour. Have no idea where it actually was and will find a map at some time to see exactly we went to.
But man alive!!!!!what a
massive place. ‘Shop until you drop’ paradise!!!!!and that’s almost what we did. Levis, shoes, cosmetics, handbags and a watch, Swarovski ornament, PJs, and probably heaps others including some bits and pieces for the grandchildren at Disney. Some of it was even for me, believe it or not. Shopped from about 2pm until 8pm with hardly a break apart from very frequent stops to buy drinks at vending machines. The whole massive complex is not like a covered mall and we were doing a lot of walking between buildings on very hot conditions.
Did the Debit Card take a hammering…..HELL YES!!! But it was Joy’s Birthday after all so how could I say NO!!!!! It got to the stage where we couldn’t really carry any more so we decided to leave some shopping for the Waikele Outlet Centre at Honolulu on the way home.
It’s now 1130pm and I’m writing this up after a quick trip to the 24 hour chemist across the road for heaps of blister stuff for Joy’s badly damaged feet and a quick bite at an Italian Pizza place next door to the chemist….not the birthday dinner we had planned but
simply ran out time and we have an erlyv start in the morning for our 5 hour guided walking tour of parts of the City and a 3 hour ‘City Lights’ guided driving tour in the evening. So we may have a special dinner tomorrow sometime.
That’s day 2 in NYC and are we flagging….YES!!!!but determined to keep going at our usual crazy hectic pace to take in as much as we can.
Catch you all tomorrow!!!maybe.
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dennise elers
non-member comment
Oh how I miss new york. Loving the blog posts Bruce and well done on the shopping.