Wednesday 1 August 2012 – The longest day
Day 110 and 50 to go
6am. Oh My Goodness! Alarm
blaring I wake up stretched across the bed and not down it. Hmmm. Restless
much! Paul was up and out having a shower while I struggled to keep the eyelids
open. Just a few more minutes.
The inevitable arrived and I
had a shower, we got ready and then we went down stairs to have breakfast. With
that out of the way we returned to the room grabbed our bags and made the way
down to reception to checkout, before dragging our bags for the final time
through Frankfurt train station and down to the platform to wait for the 7.17
train to the airport. It was packed with other tourists doing the same.
10min later we arrived at the
airport and made our way to terminal 1 where we used the Lufthansa computer
pods to check ourselves in print our boarding passes. We then joined the line
to drop our bags. It didn’t take too long before our 44kg was sent on its way
and we were left to wheel our hand luggage around.
We wandered the terminal
buying a drink and then heading to our gate. Paul had the usual pat down after
setting off the metal detector. The man was VERY thorough this time. After
having our boarding passes checked for the 5th time we finally made
it to our gate and sat watching our Lufthansa A380 being loaded with food.
At 9.35am they began to load
on the passengers. We were in our seat by 10am. Luckily for us we had scored
seats by the exit so Paul had lots of leg room. We made ourselves comfortable
and by 11, after a long taxi they were finally lifting the massive bird off the
ground and into the air. It was surprisingly smooth.
I settled into watch Mirror
Mirror. A drink and pretzel snack was served to us and time slowly disappeared.
We were served lunch, a chicken and vege dish that was quite delicious. Shortly
after the movie finished and I began watching The Lucky One.
Paul had his attendant light
on as he was thirsty, 30min later I put mine on and 30min after that I had
finally had enough and went to get my own drink from the galley. It was really
ridiculous.
With the second movie
complete I began watching The Hunger Games. We had a small pizza snack with an
hour and a half to fly. Paul let the hostess know that he had his light on for
a long time with no response. There was an apology but the service didn’t
change.
By midday we began our
descent into New York after completing our trans Atlantic crossing. It was very
dark outside, not that I could see much as the wind took up most of the view
from the window unfortunately.
I watched the camera views they
had feeding through to the headrest screens and before we knew it we were
touching down at JFK airport at 12.45pm or 6.45pm where we had just come from.
The taxiing to our gate took
a long time and with the seatbelt sign not working there were plenty of people
up and ready to get going only to be told to sit down. We were glad when the plane finally came to a
stop but then of course everyone was trying to get out and there was a backlog.
We just had to wait. Which would be the flavour of the arvo.
The first stop was at
homeland security and immigration. The line was loooong so more waiting. Paul
had a headache and just wanted to get on with it. They did eventually open
extra counters and we eventually faced “the Man”. We had the prints of both
hands recorded and a photo taken, felt like we were jail mates. The man was
friendly enough and gave us a passport stamp before sending us on.
The next wait was at the
baggage carousel. My bag was waiting as soon as we got there but Paul’s took
ages. I began thinking back to Hong Kong when his bag was lost. Please not
again was all I could think. However, it did eventually appear, though it
appeared as if it had been dropped from the plane and run over. I hope it lasts
the next 6 weeks.
With our bags in tow we
pushed our way through customs and out into the arrival hall and into the
steaming weather. It was now raining quite steadily. We needed to find a way
into the city. There were plenty of taxis but at $45 we opted for the airport
bus. We were ripped off for our ticket by a man we thought was super helpful.
We failed to get the change off him. First lesson learned.
The bus was fine thought the
streets were crap, busy and full of potholes in desperate need of repair. It
drove us through typical American suburbs in Queens. Houses were flying the US
flag, yellow school busses were everywhere. All the while the bus had an all
American soundtrack playing. Welcome to America.
We passed through the Queens
tunnel and into Manhattan. I knew New York would be massive but this is just
incredible. My eyes shot up. The buildings were so tall all glass, concrete,
brick and steel. I had a pain in my neck from all the craning. WOW! Was an
audible sound escaping my lips on many occasions.
We were deposited an hour
later at Grand Central Station, it was now 3pm and still raining. We were
transferred to a hotel shuttle to continue the final part of our journey. The
streets were starting to clog up and our time on the road frustrating. I knew
our hotel was only a mile walk away but it was not going to be a quick one.
I continued to be in awe of
what we were seeing. So many familiar buildings were jumping out at me and when
we passed the neon lights of Times Square I was enthralled. I knew right then I
was going to enjoy this city, Paul on the other hand may need a little more
convincing.
We finally pulled up at the
Salisbury hotel at 4pm, we had now been up 16 hours and were feeling it. We
checked in with our friendly front desk staff and then made it to our room on
the 10th floor. With Paul’s headache worse and me feeling tired we
decided to head out to get money and food then come home and go to bed.
We were pointed in the
direction of an ATM at the top of the street and crossed the road to buy a sandwich
that we ate in the store. It wasn’t cheap either. I thought food was supposed
to be cheap.
Anyway we returned to the
room at 5, had a shower and then pulled the curtain and called it a day.
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