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Published: October 20th 2010
We got up bright (okay, maybe not so bright after our late night last night) and early to leave at 7am for our flight to New York. The taxi took us to a 24hr chemist on the way to the airport so that I can fill my script for painkillers as we won’t be able to fill it in the US. We had a really nice driver, he moved here from Ghana was plenty happy to have a chat.
It’s a strange Immigration system as we went through the US Customs before we left Canada, much like when we went to London by train from Paris we were processed by UK Customs before we left France.
We also had to use the automatic ticket machines here to collect our boarding passes and luggage tags, no chance of sweet talking our way into an upgrade this way - very smart of the airlines, haha! The other odd thing is after we were ticketed we still had to carry all of our luggage through the security point before we dropped it off on the other side. It takes a long time and the line goes on forever.
There are 2
flights to New York leaving at same time but to different airports, one was overbooked and so they offered people a $250 voucher to switch flights. Pity it wasn’t our flight or we would have taken it up, it felt like we were watching an episode of Airline.
We were on the teeniest plane yet, only 3 seats wide and 16 rows long, they let us board first because Tim had to carry everything. He kept joking before we left that he was only coming along to carry all the bags - careful what you joke about….
The flight was short, only hour and a half but good, we flew along the Hudson River when we arrived at New York, the view was great coming in. The airport is next to the river and it seems the landing strip is pretty darn close to the water.
John F Kennedy airport wasn’t anything too special; I guess we had pretty high expectations for no other reason than it’s the famous JFK, certainly not in arrivals anyway. We both agree that one of our favourite airports to arrive at was Vancouver! It is really big though, it was a
long, long walk to luggage area. For poor Tim carrying both back packs it probably felt twice as far. But he was saying only yesterday how he missed his gym workouts!
The taxi to city is a set price of $50, but a limo (just a sedan, not a stretch!) pull up saying he’d do it for $45, so we jumped in, besides we couldn’t find the entry for the taxi rank.
He talked on the phone in Spanish the whole way (although he did break for a moment to ask if the air conditioner was okay), even nudged the kerb going through the tunnel! Found out why he was $5 cheaper - he made us pay the $5.50 toll.
Our hotel, the Salisbury Hotel, in good spot on 57th Street near 7th Avenue, just a block away from Central Park. The numbered streets names make it so easy to get around, the Streets go North/South (I think) and Avenues go East/West (again, I think - it may be the other way around but you get my drift…)
They let us check in early, but when we saw the room it had 2 very small double
beds not a King that we had booked, but on the up side, it did have a microwave. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered us except that I need a bit of room to sleep at the moment with the ribs and a tight squeeze won’t be a good idea. The hotel let us switch rooms except we would have a little while to wait.
So we had a lunch at a nice cafe near the hotel. We had a window table so we could sit and watch the New York life show go on before us. First impressions is that everyone has somewhere they need to be and are rushing to get there, except for the tourists who do-si-do their way around getting in the way of those busy New Yorkers! Again, a lot of homeless people, it makes you feel bad that you can’t help, but if we gave just $1 to everyone who asked, well, we would have to start begging!
We have a map of the subway and it’s an enormous system, puts all the others we’ve been on to shame! But all the entrances are quite discreet really, just a simple covered stair way
down, you could almost miss them in all the other busy-ness going on. And the cool thing (for me, because I’m easily pleased I guess) there really is steam and hot air coming from the vents in the street a-la Marilyn Monroe!
We cancelled our bike ride tour through Central Park which is a real shame, I was really looking forward to it. The tour was going to take us past all the prominent sights and also show us where some movies and TV shows were filmed. The guy in the bike shop was nice and understanding and said he would refund us our money.
CENTRAL PARK
We decided to walk to Central Park, it’s a beautiful park, so green and so many different types of gardens, streams and lakes. We also found lots of horse cart rides. So we found the nicest horse (they were all nice and in great condition, but still not as good as Calgary or London Police) and went for a horse and cart ride through Central Park, pretty romantic really! The ride was an hour and cost $100. There is a shorter tour, but this one takes in the whole park.
The park was really busy, maybe because it was Saturday or maybe because it was Central Park, I’ll let you all debate that one. There was walkers, runners, cyclists, rickshaw type bikes, rollerbladers, other horse carts, you name it. There was lots of grassed areas with loads of people sunbathing, our driver says it’s called Manhattan Beach. There are lots of baseball diamonds with people training, playing matches or just sitting in the stands alongside watching, these are next to one of the oldest carousels in history.
Our driver pointed out where loads of movie scenes were filmed like the lake from Big Daddy where they put branches on the path to make the rollerbladers stack into the lake, the remote control boat lake from Stuart Little, famous buildings like the building in Ghostbusters and homes of famous people like Yoko Ono, lots of famous sites like the corner where John Lennon was shot and his memorial, Strawberry Fields, in the park.
There was one really long queue of people kind of in the middle of nothing in particular and we are told that every week there is a free concert in the park, last week it
was the Black Eyed Peas. But because it’s free, you have to be in the queue outrageously early!
It’s quite warm (n-i-c-e) so it’s good to be in the luxury of the cart!
Our new room is ready for us and was much better, bigger and with a good size bed! Except now it doesn’t have tea and coffee facilities, no matter. We have a good view of the street, we are opposite Carnagie Hall and the Russian Tearooms.
After a bit of a rest we get dinner and eat in our room, pretty tired and it’s been a long day.
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