We started our trip with a nice and early 5am wake up call. Nothing like flying east to get you up and off to the airport early! We were on a nice new Boeing 787 and while we (Kris and I) had emergency row seats with tons of leg room, we had to “reboot the plane” as we were taxing out to the runway. I called it rebooting the plane, the pilot said he had to restart the engines and reset a breaker…..
The flight was nice and easy 5 hours and despite doing some lazy S turns into Newark, New Jersey, we did eventually land. I think we were parked up there for 20+ minutes. Luggage at Newark is sloooooooooow. Worse than YVR. We took NJ Transit across the Hudson River to Manhattan and got off at Penn Station. We bought our unlimited metro passes and promptly got on the subway (holy hell it’s hot in those stations). Pro tip – Trains marked “2” on the red line are express and don’t stop at 23rd street. We wanted 23rd street. Not a huge deal as it did stop at 14th and it was a nice easy walk to the AirBnB we’d booked (numbered blocks are really short). Must say a 4 bedroom brownstone in Chelsea is awesome, despite getting there much later than expected.
After we’d settled in it was a quick hop back on the subway (from the right station really close to our ‘apartment’ this time) to Times Square for dinner.
It is a crazy place that reminds us a lot of the Las Vegas strip – tons of neon and huge, video billboards. Times Square is often referred to as “The Crossroads of the World”, “the Centre of the Universe”, “the Heart of the Great White Way”. It is not a ‘square’ but is actually formed by two triangles making a ‘bowtie’ shape where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue.
After experiencing Times Square we headed back on the subway to our brownstone.