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Published: November 14th 2012
We've been home (back in the UK) for 6 months now after travelling for 14 months as a family, plenty of time to move back into our house and fill it with all the crap associated with a 'normal' existence, all the things we shook off when we left. Before we even came home though, Faye and I had talked about going away for a break later on in the year, just the two of us, without the kids. Time to get back some of that closeness that inevitably gets lost once you start sharing your life so closely with little people who at times can be incredibly emotionally and physically demanding.
New York for 6 days was our destination of choice. A perfect short city break, which we could explore to our hearts content without having to worry about tiny legs getting tired, or 6.30pm bedtimes.
So... a few months ago I excitedly booked the flights, relishing the thoughts of getting some alone time with the love of my life. Fast forward a few months and of course the anxiety hit like freight train. They've never been apart from us for more than one night, even then that
was only a few miles down the road. Even after being gone for only one night, when the time comes for them to return we're dancing around the front window waiting for their arrival, eager for the silence to be shattered by their boisterous cries and laughter, a silence we think of nostalgically when they're around but which in reality after years of non-stop noise is just plain boring. Deep down we know everything will be fine but it doesn't stop the worry...
In the week running up to our departure I checked the weather forecast, marvellous, it looked like rain all week, still at least it would be a break away and the weather in the UK was hardly spectacular so not much change. A few days later concern started to rise in the media about hurricane Sandy tracking up the East Coast, with predictions that New York would actually be hit by the storm. We were scheduled to fly Saturday night and as the flight was still running there's nothing we could do, if we cancelled it rather than the airline we'd lose everything we'd already paid for, so we were going, maybe it would just be
a bit of wind and rain and it would all be OK?
We landed in Newark after an uneventful but really boring flight, looking after kids on flights is hard work but it sure makes time fly. After the long wait through immigration, where again I was shamelessly profiled by Homeland Security and taken aside for more questioning. Yes I have facial piercings and tattoos, get over it, these DO NOT make me a threat to national security . I have passed through countless airports in Asia and Europe and never encountered anything, twice we've been to the USA, and twice this has happened, jeez what century do these guys live in???
We opted to stay in Jersey City as we could get a much nicer room for way cheaper than in Manhattan and as it's only a 20 minute PATH journey from Journal Square PATH station which was one block away from the hotel to the world trade centre or 33rd street it was ideal. On the cab ride from the airport it quickly became apparent that they were starting to take the approaching storm very seriously as all along the highway, large signs were declaring "
STATE OF EMERGENCY". Once in the hotel, again it became apparent this was not going to be a minor storm as more than half of the TV channels were dedicated to tracking Sandy, making predictions as to where and when it would hit the coast.
On Sunday we woke early and eagerly looked outside. It was windy but dry so we thought we'd head into Manhattan as planned and make sure we had a good walk round Central Park as it might rain for the rest of the week. We got the PATH, which was as effortless as we'd hoped and pretty cheap at only $2.25 each and set about exploring midtown. First we walked up Broadway enjoying the sights of Times Square stopping at some of the shops along the way if they caught our attention and then continued on to Central Park. We spent a good couple of hours exploring the park just beyond the half way point before heading back down towards Times Square. We had a great time in the park and it made it easy to forget what was approaching even as the wind was starting to strengthen and the clouds were getting thicker.
We stopped for lunch at a 'famous' deli for some hot pastrami sandwiches, which although amazing to look at as they were so huge and also pretty damn tasty it quickly becomes apparent once you start eating them just how obscene the portion size was as we were unable to eat more than about a quarter. No worries though as we got the leftovers to take away.
Once through with lunch we continued our exploration of midtown taking a walk towards the Chrysler Building stopping in Grand Central station to admire its beauty and then headed over to the Rockefeller Centre to visit the 'Top of the Rock' observation deck but sadly it was closed due to the approaching storm. From the Rockefeller we continued our exploration of midtown by just wandering around before making our way back to the hotel as they were starting to shut down all the mass transit systems at 7pm and as pretty much everything was closing in anticipation of the storm anyway, we didn't want to get stuck, unable to get back to the hotel.
The next day (Monday 29th) virtually everything was closed, there were no mass transit systems running at
all, the only thing we noticed open was the ubiquitous fast food places. Everything was bracing for the approaching storm with mandatory evacuation orders for various areas including parts of lower Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Predictions of the storms path were being made on virtually every channel with most agreeing it would be later that evening somewhere along the New Jersey coast. So what could we do, with everything being closed and no way to get into NYC? Well we took a walk around, that's pretty much all we could do. The wind was pretty strong with the occasional shower so hardly strolling around weather but there was only so long we could watch the TV, which was pretty much dedicated to the storm interspersed with terrible adverts for cars with shitty gas mileage. We started off by walking to the waterfront, not sure why we thought that would be a good idea considering what was coming, but we were bored and had nothing better to do. It wasn't too far a walk and it wasn't long till we were getting spray blasted in the face from the wind whipping off the water and staring at Manhattan
getting battered by horizontal rain and wind.
It was also very easy to see how bad things are likely to get, water was already flooding over the boardwalk and the water was predicted to get much higher when the storm surge hit especially combined with the the full moon high tide later that evening. After a short walk along the walkway, we headed back to the hotel stopping at Dunkin' for some Halloween sweet treats on the way. With nothing much to do we spent the night at the hotel wondering what will happen once the storm makes landfall.
During the night the power went off, which because we were plunged into absolute darkness, coupled with the wind woke me up. I thought nothing of it and fell back asleep figuring it would come back on fairly soon. We woke in the morning and the power was still off so after raiding the hotel breakfast we headed out for a look around. It turned out the whole city was without power and it was a very strange experience walking around. It felt like some kind of Armageddon had happened. It was extremely busy as people were wandering around
with not much else to do, mobile phone reception was non-existent and the only source of news were small radios which people were huddling around listening intently and trying to gain any information about the situation that they could. There was the constant wail of sirens from the police, fire and ambulance crews but also the national guard were patrolling, no doubt to discourage looting. There was only minor damage where we were, lots of signs blown over and some shop signage blown off but from what information we could get it was obvious that flooding had been catastrophic for lower lying areas of Jersey City and NYC.
The day ended up being incredibly boring... There was little to do but drain the battery on everything we had and take short walks around just for something to do. for food we bought what little we could from the couple of convenience stores that were trying to do business. We were missing the boys already but this just made it worse, keeping them occupied would have been far from easy but at least the time would fly.
At night we took a walk as high as could to see
if there were any lights on in NYC, although it was obvious much of it was blacked out, it seemed there may be power in some parts. We had a plan for the next day if there were no transport options, walk as far as we could and get a cab under the Lincoln tunnel to Manhattan as there was no way we could cope with another day of boredom and apparently a cab the whole way would be prohibitively expensive. Also due to no reception and the fact I have a smartphone who's battery lasts precisely a day (how's that for technological progress, my old phone lasted about two weeks on one charge?) I hadn't even been able to contact home to tell everyone we were ok, we needed to find somewhere with power and a connection.
The next morning we woke and there was still no power so we got our stuff together and headed to the PATH station which although we knew wouldn't be running it seemed as good as any place to start our expedition to NYC. As soon as we'd walked the one block to the station a small bus pulled up beside us,
the door opened and the bus driver yelled something I couldn't understand at me. After looking at him for too long, slack jawed like an idiot while my brain tried to decipher what was being shouted, he shouted again, but this time something which was very clearly "42nd Street". I could've kissed him, we obviously looked like tourists so he'd just stopped on the off chance that we wanted to go into NYC. We jumped on and an hour later after being stuck in tons of traffic going through the Lincoln tunnel and for the massive sum of $3 we got off at the Port Authority bus terminal in NYC.
Due to massive flooding and no power we couldn't go anywhere near lower Manhattan (there was no power from about 37th street down) so as before we spent our day around midtown. First off we needed to power up and contact friends and family to ensure them we were ok so we found a cafe with a free power socket to hang about in and after that after that we hit the shops (everything was open again), ate some lovely food as we could eat in ACTUAL restaurants again
and tried to go to the 'Top of the Rock' again to get some aerial views of the city. Sadly this wasn't open still so instead we headed to the Empire State Building to see if the observation deck was open there instead. Thankfully it was and of course the view was spectacular, probably not as good as the view from the helicopter we had booked and paid for but which for obvious reasons was cancelled, but as good an alternative as it gets...
As we were unsure how late the bus back to Jersey City would be running we headed back fairly early and thankfully our hotel now had power... After two days we could now see what our room looked like again. We could also scan the TV channels and get a better idea of the devastation the storm had caused.
On our final day, we checked the status of our flight for that evening and as it was the first day that the airports were fully open, thankfully our flight wasn't cancelled, there was a pretty hefty delay as the plane was in the wrong place, but that's not too bad. Again in the morning
we jumped on the bus, which had a much quicker transit time to NYC this time due to rules that that were put in place saying that no cars with less than 3 people were allowed to enter the city via the Lincoln Tunnel.
Like the day before we spent the day in midtown as although this was the first day the subway was open there was only a partial service, with no trains running south of 42nd street. We decided to spend the morning at a museum so visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to check out some of the works by some of the great artists and also to laugh at a lot of complete tosh which in my worthless opinion could be better executed by a chimp. A square canvas painted white, but not completely to the edge so that the raw canvas can be seen??? Give me a fricking break, that's not art, that's not even making a bloody effort at all!!!!
After the museum we filled up with some more good food before heading back to pick up our stuff and get to the airport, ready for the long wait for our
plane to turn up. A wait that was actually longer than the flight we were taking...
So... How was our time in New York? Obviously it wasn't ideal. We never managed to do half the things we had planned, and it was hardly a cheap trip. I do find it hard to get pissed off though, so our holiday wasn't perfect, big deal. When you've spent the evening watching interview after interview with people talking about how they've lost everything its easy to put things into perspective.
The time we did have in the city was great and it really is an amazing city but I'm not sure it would rank in my top 5 favourite cities, storm or no storm. It didn't really have any surprises for me. Everything was as I imagined, I've seen so many images, TV shows and films set in the city that it felt like I'd seen it all before. The food was great, the people friendly and there is still plenty to see so we'll definitely be back someday, even if its just to complete the list of things we really wanted to do this time but were unable to.
As for travelling without the boys again, I think we've decided it just isn't for us, especially for that long. Although we were fine and so were they, we missed them terribly. As someone wrote on my Facebook wall when we found out the storm was coming "that's karma for travelling without the boys", well... it turns out, Karma's a bitch....
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Divine Intervention....
Hmm, why do I always get the feeling that this happens to me too.... Well, I'm glad to hear that you both got through it all unscathed. I suppose in retrospect, if you had of had the kids with you, it would have been more of a worry and a less enjoyable holiday, especially when an approaching behemoth of a storm like that one has the potential of offering up all kinds of catastrophic uncertainties.