Blog 1 - The Americans Don't Do Breakfast

Here we go! So, Nick’s parents dropped us off at Heathrow at about 11.30pm ready for our flight at 2.30pm. A little premature, you might think? The reason for this early arrival was that Jonathan (Nick’s brother) had kindly booked us into the “No 1 Travellers Lounge” so that we could relax before our flight, away from all the riff-raff in the rest of the airport ;-) As well as the area for eating and drinking, the lounge comprised of a cinema, a games room, a spa, and even a room called “The Snug”, where weary travellers can have a sleep for an hour or two before continuing their journey!  I have to say, it was most enjoyable; we had lots of delicious free food, relaxed in comfy chairs and generally we felt very fancy.  I only hope that Jon has booked the same deal for us in all the other airports we will be visiting along our way…

Onto the flight now – the plane was one of those HUGE things with a bar, an upper deck etc.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to explore these areas as we didn’t pay all the mega dollars for First Class tickets.  On the upside, the area we were in looked just like the inside of the plane of off that Friends episode where they are all flying back from Barbados, and they have to keep swapping seats because of that whole Joey and Rachel, Ross and Charlie kissing incident.  So, I enjoyed that.  Anyway, seen as this was the longest flight either of us had been on, it passed surprisingly quickly.  Perhaps due to the mini TVs in the back of all the seats showing such classics as the below:

Even the food was pretty decent, much better than the standard plane fare we had been expecting.  About 20 minutes into the flight, an air hostess (or do you have to say “host” nowadays to be PC?) came over with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot which Nick’s parents had ordered as a surprise for us!  Well, this was lovely of them, and what made it even better was that after we had explained to the air hostess that it was our honeymoon, she brought us two complimentary glasses of champagne too!  After the glass each and the other two complimentary cans of beers each, we decided to save the bottle for NYC as due to the altitude we were already kind of tipsy.  

So we arrived into JFK and got a taxi to our hotel in Queens, and we were STARVING.  Nick went to find the nearest takeaway food, which was Subway (of course!)  We ate quickly and fell asleep pretty much instantly.

The next day (Thursday) we went down ready to fill our bellies with a classic American Breakfast.  To be fair to the Americans, I don’t think we really knew what we were expecting, but it was definitely something better than this: Bread, un-spreadable butter and a small selection of highly sugar-based cereals. We discovered later that the Americans are actually more of the “brunch types” and that hotel breakfasts aren't really a big thing over there. 

Off we went into Manhattan to find sustenance of some kind.  We found an AMAZING place called Cosi in the Rockefeller Centre.  It basically does the best salads in the entire world, and they are properly huge portions too!  For those of you who care, I had a salad consisting of Gorgonzola, Grilled Chicken, Bacon, Peppers and Tomatoes….mmmmmmm.  Nick had some kind of sandwich – I don’t know, I was too engrossed in my salad.  We then went for a lovely walk around Central Park, which is so pretty.

After Central Park we strolled down 5^th Avenue looking at all the posh shops, and Nick committed the cardinal sin of stopping to take a CD from someone who seemed like they were “handing out free CDs just to be nice”.  This was not the case, as in fact after he had given Nick a signed copy of his CD, he then wanted a donation of 20 dollars.  We gave him 5 dollars and quickly made our escape.  Lesson learnt there.

We arranged to meet Daisy at 5.15 under the clock at Grand Central Station (just like in the films).  Once we’d located her, we went and had a burger and fries at Shake Shack, then Daisy showed us the whispering walls!  This is a really cool thing:  There is an arch in Grand Central Station where if you and another person stand against opposite sides about 10 metres away from each other and put your ears to the wall, you can have a conversation THROUGH THE WALLS!  

Daisy then took us to Johnny Utah’s – her favourite dive bar complete with mechanical bull.  Nick rode said bull extremely valiantly.  The video is on Facebook for those who need convincing.

Our lovely NYC host then took us to a very exclusive rooftop bar called 230 Fifth with amazing views of Manhattan.  We all put on red dressing gowns over our clothes to keep us warm.  This seemed odd and kind of cult-like at first, but soon proved to be an excellent idea.  We were very tired after an hour or so here, so we said bye to Daisy and her Mountbatten friend, Megan and made our way back on the Subway to Queens. 

A small side note here:  At the bar I met an English woman who lives in New Malden!  
5 minutes away from where we lived in Kingston!  Small world indeed.

Oh, and to finish with today, here is a picture of Nick standing next to a map of the New York subway system, while wearing his t-shirt depicting that same system.

The rest of the NYC tales to follow shortly :-)