evila_elf | New York Trip Day 1 (Reply)

Did I mention I went to New York with

michelleann68 last weekend?

For the couple of days leading up to the trip, I went to bed early. Midnight on Wednesday,then 8pm on Thursday. As most of you know, I like to stay up until like 5am, so this was tricky, but necessary lol. I had a shuttle van pick me up at 2:05am Friday morning. I was the first stop and it was over an hour before anyone else was picked up. The van driver wasn't very chatty, and I am only chatty when people talk back. Yay when we finally started to get new people. 6 others. Had a nice little chat with the next lady, but other than that, it was very quiet. Even the couple that got picked up remained quiet. Bleh.

Dropped off at the airport around 5am.

Note: I have been on an airplane before, but I have never flown alone. But flight wasn't until 7:45am, so I had plenty of time to figure things out.

Went to the info desk to make sure I had everything I needed, then went through security. Got a pat down (haha), then I was free (whee). Got munchies from the food court, then found my gate, then settled in with a good-ish book and waited (and waited).

Checked my bag because it was a full flight, it was free, and I am too short to get my bag in the overhead. Though upon having a nice seat to see just how they handle the checked bags as they load them (which turns out exploded my travel shampoo container), no more am I going to do that!

Flight seemed like a very long 6+ hours. I pretty much read, looked out the window, and tried to listen to music (even with the volume pumped up, I had a hard time hearing which song was which). Only notable thing was the lady next to me. When we were about halfway into the flight, the fasten seat belt light went off and we both got ready to run to the bathroom. 10 seconds later, it came back on. And stayed on for 20 minutes. We said 'screw it' at that point and got up anyway.

Arrived. Wandered a lot to be able to find out where I needed to be to catch a shuttle ride to New York. I was at the Newark airport. Michelle was flying in to a different airport (we were both scheduled to arrive at the same minute, which was awesome). More waiting, as we needed more people for a full shuttle.

Guy to drive us finally showed up, announced for us to follow him, then he took off at the fastest walk I have ever seen. We scrambled to follow him (or I followed the bright purple bag in front of me as I had already lost sight of him and almost ran over a kid). We got loaded into the van. Then waited. Guy grumbled and talked into his walkie talkie. Then he drove to another gate. Another person got on, then the driver wandered off for 15 more minutes. Never said a word to us. He finally came back, started the van, and we were off to New York.

I think Michelle beat me by a half our or so (or at least it seemed like it). I was the last stop on the van.

Landed at about 4pm est, I think. Didn't get to the hotel until like 6 or 7. So we didn't have much time to do anything exciting. Ate dinner at the hotel. Then we went out to wander around some. Here are some pics I took that night:

This building was really tall. I love the way this pic turned out:

This was super cool. There was a building with a countdown timer on it. When it got to 0, the clock disappeared and a 'show' was but on, with bubbles and snowflakes and music.