Friday, July 22nd:
After I finished working a long 10-hour shift, we hurried down to the SLO airport to begin our journey. Having never flown out of SLO, we didn't know what to expect, other than it being small. And small it was. There were maybe 30 seats on the plane. And it was so noisy we couldn't hear each other. Reminded me of some of our flights in Africa. Good thing it was only a 45 minute flight.
After finding our way to our gate at LAX, we found out the plane we were waiting for to Newark was about 2 hours late due to weather problems. Slight problem...we only had 45 minutes between flights. And there's only 1 flight a day from Newark to Antigua. The poor guy at the ticket counter was trying to find a way to get us to Antigua on Saturday, but to no avail. And the flight on Sunday only had 2 seats left...in first class. Fortunately he got permission from his supervisor to upgrade us so that we'd only be a day late, instead of two. And in Newark we would pick up our hotel vouchers so we wouldn't have to live in the airport for a day.
Jeff and I tried not to cry. Or yell. It was late, we were tired, and our honeymoon was crumbling before our very eyes. But our only choice was to accept the situation at hand, suck it up, and make the most of the situation.
The plane finally made it into LAX, we finally boarded, and we settled into our bulkhead seats that the ticket guy moved us into to try to make up for the crappy situation. They were great except for being next to the bathroom. But we slept through most the flight anyway.
Saturday, July 23rd:
We made it to lovely Newark the next morning and shuffled our way to the customer service counter to get our hotel voucher. We were greeted by the nicest, sweetest, kindest ladies at the Continental counter. Oh wait...I must have still been dreaming. We were greeted by two grumpy, disgruntled, not-so-friendly Continental employees. They didn't seem to understand why a whole plane's worth of customers were so upset about missing their connections. And they weren't going to give us the hotel voucher.
Because the flight was delayed due to weather, they were not obligated to provide us any compensation. Regardless of the fact that we were stuck there for almost 24 hours. And the people in LA "should have known better." And they didn't understand "why people are so upset." At this point, Jeff had the look of "I'm about to kill someone", I had the look of "you have GOT to be kidding me, woman" and we sternly persisted that they speak to a supervisor. Long story short, they eventually gave us our voucher.
We requested a bag retrieval so we could change our clothes, and meandered our way to P4...which in Newark speak, means the place you go to catch the shuttle to your hotel. (Note: we deciphered this after asking a couple people where to go and not really getting any help.) We caught our shuttle to the Newark Ramada Plaza Hotel, and got a lovely tour of the sketchy neighborhood we were about to spend the night in. We got to check-in early into our room, which I wish I had a picture of so you would know I'm not exaggerating. There were two deadbolts on the door, stains on the ceiling and walls, air conditioning only in the rooms and not in the hallways, and the tiles were not exactly attached to the bathroom floor.
After a quick shower, we decided we better not spend the entire day in the room or we might become fully depressed. So we took the shuttle back to the airport, and got information about going into NYC. Mind you, I have wanted to go to New York for quite some time. But this was not the time. First, it was 100ยบ with what felt like 100% humidity. Oh yea, and we were supposed to be in Antigua. Not Newark/NYC.
We took the Manhattan Express into NYC, which dropped us off near Times Square.
We walked around Broadway (which was not nearly as impressive as I thought it was going to be), and into Times Square, overwhelmed by the shear number of people and terrible smell of sweat, dirt, smog, trash, and all around filth. We decided to have lunch at the Hard Rock and cool off for a little bit in an air conditioned building.
Then we walked through Bryant Park, which is quite beautiful. There was an outdoor reading room, and chess sets (most of them in use by older men), and a lawn with a giant screen where it looked like a movie would be showing later that night. All I could think about was Fashion Week and Project Runway.
We then walked in front of the NY Public Library...such cool architecture.
And then headed into Grand Central Station. The ceiling was gorgeous, with the constellations lit up. Such a huge place, with so much going on. And such a pretty building in general.
We finally made it to the Chrysler Building, which was closed by the time we got there.
So we figured out how to make it to the Empire State Building. Let me tell you, city blocks are something else! I thought I was going to die in the heat/humidity. We didn't go inside, but took pictures outside.
We eventually made it back to the bus depot and waited for our ride back to the airport.
We made it back to the hotel, ordered a pizza from the cafe in the lobby, and called it a night. We just wanted to get on the plane in the morning and make it to Antigua.
New York...I'm sorry we didn't like you. We are not big city people. Especially when we didn't plan on being there in the first place. And not when it's disgustingly hot and humid. There is more of you I wish to see, but not anytime soon. I need more time to warm up to the idea of visiting you again.
1 comment:
you will come visit me, in nice springtime weather, and we will go no where near times square or broadway -- we will go biking in a pretty park, and eat cupcakes and mac&cheese and ny pizza at sidewalk cafes on streets that don't smell. :)
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