The New York trip, chapter two: breathing the city

Being back in the city, what is the first thing you do? Seems like a simple question, but it really isn’t at all. I had already been thinking about it for weeks, but I couldn’t find the right answer. Did I wanna go out for dinner and have some real american food? Or just stroll around the city for a bit? Or put on a dress and heels and find a club?

I didn’t do any of that. When finally having arrived at the hostel I went out to have some drinks with an old friend, H. And it happens to be that H. and I dated for about 5 months when I was living in the city. Writing this down, it seems like the least likely first thing to do.. but it happened. And in a way it was good, I had fun, but in another way it was rather disappointing. Putting it in one sentence, it was fun to see H. again, but the guy didn’t change a bit and still just talks about himself and his world of partying and working in some stupid restaurant and every time he put his arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek I turned my head and tried to escape from his way too tight grip. Sigh. But I have to admit that, for some reason, I didn’t go back to the hostel before 2.30pm. You might think, how is that possible when you haven’t even enjoyed your night that much? I really have no idea.

Anyways, the next day K and I went to Long Island, to see her former-host-family. It was good, had a lot of fun, and it seemed like no time had passed because I felt right at home again. A little background information: I used to hang out at K’s place about every day during the week when we were au pairs. So I’ve been around her host-family’s house quite often hehe. After having spent an entire afternoon playing with the kids (who recognized me and were actually excited to see me again, so cute!) it was time to head back to the city. We had a night of partying ahead of us, so we had to dress up. And by dressing up I mean: dress and heels. We went to Greenhouse. There we had a great night, and I honestly loved being back in a real club again (partying in Holland is a lot different, no clubs like the Manhattan ones).

The next morning (thursday) K and I went to Long Island, again. Please, don’t start to think that we didn’t spend any time in the city, and only went back to our roots. It just happened to be the case that we went back to Long Island (LI) the first two days of our stay. Anyways, we went to the Roosevelt Field Mall (in Garden City, my hometown!) with friend A (who is an au pair at the moment), and did some shopping. After our shopping we went to the best pizza place you can imagine, Grimaldi’s (also in Garden City, and only a few blocks away from my host-family’s house so I’ve been to that place pretty often, believe me, the pizza is good). After dinner we went to the movies, and saw the most boring movie ever. It’s called ‘How do you know?’, and just don’t watch that movie, it’s not worth it. It was that bad, that we decided to leave the movie theatre when we were halfway through the movie.

Friday, 31 of December. K, A and I went into the city. We still had to fix our outfits for that night (New Years Eve), so we went shopping, again. That afternoon we said goodbye to friend A, who was going to celebrate NYE with another friend. And K and I got ready to party. We were gonna go to the Plaza hotel with friends S and R, promoters, who knew people at the Plaza.. or something, anyways, it meant that we could get in for free (which was very good because the tickets were very expensive). For some reason, K and I weren’t aware of the fact that the Plaza is one of the most luxureous hotels in Manhattan. So, when the cab dropped us off in front of the hotel we were.. stunned. Is this the place? Yes, it is. The party was as luxureous as the hotel itself, starting of with dinner (yes, we already had dinner, we didn’t know the party would include dinner, lol), we had the best beef and champagne you can imagine. But K and I were a little confused about the party, since all the guests were sitting down we didn’t expect the place to go crazy at around midnight. But S and R garanteed us it would, we just had to wait. And they were right. After we had desert (great chocolate cake, with edible gold on top, yes, no kidding) the clock was getting closer to countdown. Discolights suddenly started flashing and the dj’s turned up the volume. In a matter of seconds, the guests weren’t seeted anymore, but danced like crazy on tables and chairs. It was unbelievable, but fun! When the clock stroke midnight balloons were dropped and the people went even crazier, if that’s possible. After having spent the first hours of 2011 dancing at the Plaza hotel we got on a cab and went to Veranda. At about 6am we went back to the appartment of S and R and spent the remaining of the night sleeping on their couch (since the club was all the way downtown and our hostel was all the way uptown we felt more like crashing at their place which is also all the way downtown).

The next day is not worth writing about, we basically slept all day and went back to the hostel late in the afternoon. So, sunday. K and I went to SoHo, she wanted to get some Uggs, and I just wanted to go to Soho. We had dinner at a really nice place (but I forgot the name.. way to go!) with friend D. And we ended our last night in the city dancing at Juliet.

The New York trip, chapter one: getting there

After 1 year and almost 5 months I was finally going back to the city that I love most. Together with friend K I would get on a flight from Brussels to Washington Dullus, there we would transfer to a flight to JFK, NY. A couple of days in advance of our departure we heard about the horrible weather in NY. It seemed that some stupid blizzard isolated NY from the rest of the world. Flights got cancelled, on tv we saw thousands of people sleeping in airports… Lets say that it was rather alarming.

Anyways, the night before our departure I felt like a little child. Full of excitement. So excited that I had a hard time falling asleep (while I usually don’t have any trouble sleeping at all). Apparently I fell asleep at some point eventually, because the next morning I woke up at 6am. At 7am I was sitting in the car on the way to Brussels, with mom and dad(sweethearts, they insisted on saying goodbye at the airport). We arrived at the airport way too early, the large monitor in the departure area said that all flights to NY were cancelled. Oh gosh, that’s no good… But my flight to Washington was still going. To make sure that my friend K and I wouldn’t get stuck on the airport in Washington I asked at the United desk whether the flight from DC (Washington) to NY was cancelled or not. The woman said that it wasn’t cancelled, because it was a late flight and only the morning flights were cancelled. Ok, relieved. In the mean time, K had also arrived at the airport, so I told her the good news. After checking our luggage we said goodbye to our parents and went through security. The trip had started…

The flight from Brussels to DC was a long and bumpy one. I usually fall asleep when I’m on a plane, but we had a lot of turbulence during this flight, which kept me from sleeping. I think I saw 2 movies and listened to my ipod for hours. The fact that the plane was old and that there basically was no space to stretch your legs at all also didn’t really increase the level of comfort of the flight. Plus, our seats were just shitty. There were 3 rows of seats; 2 seats, aisle, 5 seats, aisle, 2 seats. We were in the middle of the 5 seats, great! Anyways, I think that you get the picture that the flight just sucked… After 7 hours we flew right over NY, yes we really did. Frustrating? Very much yes. But nothing we could do about that. After one more hour we touched-down on American soile in DC after a disastrous and long landing, which made me wish that I’d pass out and wake up again when we were on the ground (it really was that bad).

After we went through the embassy to check our documents we had to take our luggage and drop it off at some other spot. Luckily, we were smart enough to just take our luggage because we wanted to see if we could get to NY by train (because we had to wait for our next flight for 9 hours, so plenty of time to do some research). Next thing to do was find out whether our flight was cancelled or not. All flights to NY were cancelled, but our flight wasn’t even displayed on the monitors. After finding the United desk they told us that our flight also was cancelled. Great. That’s just something that you don’t want to hear after an 8 hour flight. Disappointment number 1. I called Amtrak, after I was put on hold for way too long the dear lady on the other end of the line told me that the first available train to NY was the 5pm one on tuesday (which was the next day). Disappointment number 2. We tried to find something out about busservices, after walking around for another 30 minutes at the airport we found a man that worked at Passengers Aid (for stranded passengers, yes really) who told us that there were no busses leaving to NY because of the weather. Disappointment number 3. We went back to the United desk, maybe we could reschedule our flight. After waiting in line for too long we finally got to talk to Misses Bongiorno, a really nice United woman that was going to help us out. She could put us on the stand-by list for flights that departed the next day (which was tuesday), so we got on a list for a flight the next morning. Unfortunately we were numbers 14 and 15 on the list. No way that we were gonna get on that flight. Disappointment number 4. The first flight that we could definitely get on was a flight Friday december 31 (the day of new years eve, just to remind you, it was Monday at that time). Disappointment number 5. We asked Misses Bongiorno, who truely felt sorry for us, whether we could get on a flight back to Amsterdam or Brussels or not. We didn’t want to be stuck in DC for days and spend new years on a plane. Yes that was possible, she put us on a flight to Amsterdam the next day, it would leave at 5pm. Disappointment number 6. I was so tired, and so disappointed, at that point I sortoff broke down, and the tears came. We thanked Misses Bongiorno for helping us and sat down to call our parents. My mom told me that I was crazy if I really went home the next day, there must be some way to get to the city. K and I went back to the Travelers Aid desk, the same guy was still working. We told him that we needed a place to stay, so he got us a hotel. A really nice on actually, the Hyatt Regency, for an even better price. Finally, something good had happened… after too much disaster.

After we had dinner at a restaurant next to the hotel we went back to our room and finally went to sleep. Waking up the next morning we discussed what we were going to do next. We were still stuck in DC, we had our flight back to Amsterdam, but we could at least try something more to get to the city. My hostmom F had called me and told me that we could get to the city by bus. So I called the Peter Pan busservices (that’s the actual name, no kidding). After holding for 15 minutes the woman (why is it always women that are doing these kinds of jobs?) on the line told me that busses were driving their normal schedules again, but that it wasn’t possible to make a reservation. Their service was a first-comes-first-goes service. Risky, but we could at least try. We decided to go back to the airport first, to reschedule our flight to Amsterdam back to our original returning flight to Brussels. So half an hour later we were back at the same desk as we were the day before. Misses Bongiorno wasn’t working, unfortunately, but the ‘new’ woman was also friendly. She got us off the flight to Amsterdam and put us back on the Brussels flight, and while she was doing that her colleague told her that an extra flight was scheduled to LaGuardia (NY) that afternoon at 2pm. The woman that was helping us asked us if we wanted to get on that flight. YES WE WOULD LOVE TO. 1.5 hours later we were on the plane, and 50 more minutes later we touched down at LaGuardia. Delighted to finally have arrived in the city it was also kind off frustrating that it only took a 50 minute flight to get there, while we seriously spent hours trying to get out of DC in some way. But whatever, I was in NY, I was finally BACK. Gosh, what a great feeling.

Tags: New York, traveling

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