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All good things have to come to an end! Today was the day that we left New York to travel home at the end of our twelve weeks away. You'll not be surprised to hear that a good part of the morning was taken up with packing. This was quite a challenge as we had each been travelling with an extra bag, the contents of which had to be packed into the airline permitted number of bags. Eventually we had the success of everything packed - we couldn't check if the bags were overweight though and this was to prove expensive at the airport.
Packing completed we went off to lunch at Cafe Berkli Parc and to have a brisk walk around the Lower East Side, including half way out along the Williamsburg Bridge across the East River. This afforded yet different views of the Manhattan skyline and a view of the 'J' subway train that we were about to take to the airport. All too soon it was time to leave the apartment. We'd worked out that we could manage the journey to JFK using the subway and the AirTrain: the worst part would probably be carrying the bags down the stairs in the apartment. This was indeed the case and we safely made it to the airport in good time.
With no printer available we hadn't been able to check-in online and found to our horror that the seats the system was allocating us at check-in were 16B and 16E: Jill was ready to cry and the nightmare continued with a $60 fee for our over-weight bags. But good fortune was smiling on us in the end as at the Gate we were able to seek a solution to our seating problem and were very happy to find that the solution offered was seats 9A and 9B - the two emergency exit seats immediately behind Business Class. Phew! The flight was a BA code-share delivered by American Airlines: can't say that we were overly impressed with them but it's also hard to pinpoint what we didn't like. This was a typical evening flight back to the UK: dinner was served and the lights dimmed so that the hapless (helpless?) passengers could try to sleep, pretending that it's not still 'awake hours' as according to their body clocks. Dinner was the usual poor airline food, so why we feel cheated that the inflight service didn't include breakfast is hard to work out. Deposited at Manchester Airport at 8.00am local time (3.00am according to our body clocks) we staggered to the train terminal, bought tickets and breakfast, learnt that there was an imminent train to Oxenholme that wasn't on the display board because it formed the back half of the Blackpool train and were on the final leg of our journey home. More good luck then!
Back home and the business of unpacking and washing is just too boring to mention so we'll leave you with the best bits. As you may expect we've endlessly discussed the question 'what were the best bits?' and have to say that we probably can't rank order a list but we do have our favourites - so in chronological order they are:
Gonzales Bay house
Pacific Rim National Park
Sea-plane journey from Victoria harbour to Vancouver Harbour
The Rockies - the hiking, the people we met (Laura, Ruth, Mickey and Gaye), the scenery and the wildlife
The Canadian train journey across Canada
The friendliness and generosity of Canadians
Lunch in the CN Tower for Jill's birthday
Parry Sound
Niagara Falls - the Maid of the Mist
Whale watching - humpbacks, orcas, grey and minke in that order
Maine - coastal scenery, the walking - Great Pond Mountain/Bridge Tower Observatory and Acadia in particular, kayaking
Walking in the White Mountains - Mt Layfette in particular
New York - Steely Dan, Paul McCartney, Pippin, Empire State Building day
You might note that this is a long list: well we had a wonderful time full of highlights!
- comments
Sally What's wrong with 16 B and E?! Pretty awesome highlights :)
Jill Well 16B is between 16A and C, then there is an aisle and 16E is between 16D and F. That's not traveling together! Yes awesome highlights!!