untold blisses

Our flight from Heathrow was midday-ish, so we had a bit of a lie in before driving the 40 minutes to the long stay car park.  The bag drop and security were easy, and we were left with about an hour and a half wait to board the plane.  I’m not a fan of terminal 4 for shopping so I didn’t bother looking, and just read whilst we waited to be called to the gate.

We ended up taking off about half an hour late (curses, not enough for compensation again!) but the flight itself felt like it took forever.  I watched About Time whilst eating my weirdly fruity chicken salad, then slept through most of A.C.O.D.  There  were three episodes of New Girl which I raced through whilst laughing quite loudly like a nerd, and I thought that would have taken me to landing but I seemed to still have enough time for 90% of the Veronica Mars Movie on my Nexus 7.

Finally we landed, and as we were three rows from the front, we managed to get off the plane quite quickly and then pretty much ran to get through security at JFK.  There was amazingly no queue, we grabbed our bags and then we were on the air train.

This was the aspect of the trip that had worried me most, as we knew we didn’t want to spend $70 dollars or so on a cab so decided quite last minute to try public transport.  We put $20 on a Metrocard once we got off the Airtrain (easy enough) as we didn’t expect to use it that much, and needed $5 for the air train and $2.50 for the subway.  I had memorised where we needed to get off the E train which was about 50 minutes away, so we settled into the plastic seat and watched the stations go by, with some very loud Russians.

And then we were at the 7th Avenue stop.  Our hotel  – the Courtyard New York Manhattan/Central Park – was pretty much opposite which made things super easy, and despite being given the room wrong first of all (I complained – I wasn’t standing for that!), we settled into our corner room overlooking Broadway and I suddenly got quite giggly.  I was in New York!  Like on the TV!  This was amazing!  The room we were upgraded to was pretty amazing – huge for New York standards with a massive bathroom and a shower with an amazing view.  It helped having floor to ceiling windows all around the room.  Heaven.

It was about 6pm by this point, and we wanted to make sure we got onto New York time as quickly as possible, so we went straight out, round the block and found ourselves sat in McGees Pub.  I knew I wanted to go here because of the HIMYM connection, but also because it was so close to our hotel and it actually was really good food.  After chicken fingers to share, I had a mozzarella and chicken sandwich, and Husband had a McGee burger.  They were yummy.  I had also guzzled a Robin Sparkles cocktail which was Crown Royal, apple pucker, and cranberry juice.  I got quite tipsy, and also oddly really into the college basketball showing on the TV.

Still  a bit drunk, I decided that I wanted to go to Times Square as it was only a couple of minutes away.  It wasn’t something on the list to do and I really wasn’t bothered before, but suddenly, it felt incredibly important that I went.  I think we spent about 30 seconds there before deciding NOPE.  Most of it was cornered off for construction, and it was just too busy and so so bright.  I thought my eyes were going to melt.  At least I can say I’ve been there.

We walked back to the hotel taking in all the sights, and stopping by Duane Reade for some late night M&M snacks (dark chocolate peanut – mmm) water and Dr Pepper, and then we flopped into bed with the curtains open to watch the lights outside.  I think we ended up watching Honey Boo Boo which I’ve never watched before – it’s an absolutely insane programme.  It’s like the filmmakers have ADHD and really was quite painful to watch when we were so tired.

And then we both fell into a well deserved deep sleep, despite all the honking and sirens.