Stuff and Nonsense

Didn’t really stay out late last night – got back to the hotel around 11pm, tired and with my feet aching.

Woke around 9am to another sunny morning and, my last day. I really, really need to get some presents sorted for folks at home, so I decide to make that the aim of the game for today, and, I think I’ve done ok. The weak dollar at the moment makes New York an attractive proposal – and its clear that I’m not the only nutter that’ll be going home with a shiny new suitcase, full of booty.

All the ‘discount’ electronics and giftware stores have hastily arranged ‘Luggage’ sections, with all manner of cases, from $400 Samsonites to cheap Asian knock-offs. I, obviously, plump for the cheapest bag I can find that’ll hold my stuff – $45 for a mid-sized expandable suitcase with a trolley handle. If it only lasts this one journey, I’ll be happy!

Wandered around the Flatiron district this morning – disappointing (though probably unsurprising, really) that most shops seem to close on Sundays (or not opening til mid-day, at the earliest). The Flatiron building is architecturally beautiful – if the people who owned the building across the intersection from it let people take photos of it from their rooftops, they’d make a killing.

Ok, so, the updates stopped. Even my mum thought I was dead, murdered by a crazy New York gangster, but, I wasn’t. I was just bloody busy. Busy, and tired, in cycles.

I went out for a quick look around when I arrived – even though I had been awake for 20+ hours by that point, to fool my mental chemistry into accepting the time-delay. This proved to be a great idea, for two reasons – 1) I have no jetlag at all, now, and 2) I found Smiths Bar, a couple of blocks from Times Square.

I like to think that I’m not the ‘regular’ tourist – sure, Times Square is pretty neat, but it’s a tourist trap ready to suck the dollar bills out of your pocket as just as soon as it can. I don’t really understand the notion of going all the way to New York to go to franchised eateries like Planet Hollywood, or movie-spinoff-moneyspinners like Bubba Gump Shrimp where you’ll eat some godawful microwaved shit served to you by a waitress that’s getting minimum wage and providing minimum effort. So, I went out on Thursday night and had a bit of a ‘recce, just to help me get my bearings.

I’m finally here, typing this up in my hotel room on the 22nd floor. What a pickle! Everything was going swimmingly perfectly well until I reached the check-in desk at the hotel.

Me: “Hello, I have a reservation for Mr Sheridan, for four days”

Snooty hotel man: “Ok”, tap-tap-tap-tap, raised eyebrow, “ah, yes, I see. Sir, your card was declined (equate my emphasis to his volume), so that booking is now gone.”

I’m sure I don’t need to give examples of some of the choice words I used here – I’m sure you can get the picture, and the long and short of it is, well, I’m on the 22nd floor looking out over Broadway , but I do need to ring my bank tomorrow – it looks like the card I ‘paid’ with is barred from international transactions, presumably as an anti-fraud measure.

The rest of the flight was fine, felt a bit tired by the end, but once we got into the last hour, it flew by (pun intended). JFK Terminal 4 deserted, and Homeland Security let me in with no qualms. Which was nice.

Hello there from Terminal 4 Airside Wetherspoons! I’d been told a number of horror stories regarding Heathrow in general, and particularly T4 (and not T5, even though its opening was a failure on a purely biblical scale). Thus-far, I believe them all to be completely unfounded.

I stepped off the tube at the T4 station (though in my eagerness at Kings Cross/St Pancras, I have to confess that I may have accidentally boarded a Piccadilly train bound for Uxbridge, and it wasn’t until Holborn until I realised my faux-pas) and no more than 3 minutes later, I was airside, thru security and in a largely deserted departure lounge.

I realise I must be epically late to the game on this whole ‘online check-in’ malarky, but, jesus h christ, it doesn’t half save some fucking around. Print off your boarding pass. Walk to security. Hand over pass and passport, nice man scans boarding pass, says “Thankyou very much Mr Sheridan, have a good flight” and you walk through to the X-ray scanners. No queueing, no fannying, no fuss.

Tomorrow’s the day! To say that I’m excited is probably a massive understatement!

I have a fairly mammoth journey ahead of me, starting at 7am when (hopefully) my local taxi co should be picking me up to take me to the station. From there, it’s a couple of hours on one of East Midland Trains’ finest (bwah!), then a long jaunt along the Piccadilly line from St Pancras to Terminal 4. Then, a 1.5 hr hop over to Amsterdam Schiphol airport, and then the nasty transatlantic leg across the pond to John F. Kennedy International.

Of course, that just gets me to the airport at the other end. There’s no point whatsoever in hiring a car in NY, so you have to rely on public transport to get you from the arrivals hall to your hotel. Assuming you don’t want to be stung by the ridiculous $45+tolls+tip taxi fare (so, in reality, more like $60), this isn’t as straightforward as it might first seem.