Newlyweds in the Caribbean: Curse of the DLXDDP - Day 22 - Travel to NYC & Highline walk

[Scruffette]

Newlyweds in the Caribbean: Curse of the DLXDDP - Day 22

Index

Thursday 20th September

Check out of Grand Floridian, Travel to New York, Highline Walk


This morning’s 6am wake up call was not appreciated after such a late night. I was sad to be leaving the Grand Floridian, but was also excited that our trip wasn’t yet over and we had three nights in New York. Having such a long honeymoon really was the best idea!

Breakfast was cinnamon buns from Gaston’s Tavern that we picked up last night.



A bit of time in the microwave and some extra frosting revived them to yesterday’s freshness. Oddly for me, I found these too sweet for first thing in the morning. Normally I can eat sugar at any time of the day!

One last look at the monorail from the balcony



We left the room reluctantly at 7.10am and made our way down to the Port Cochere (I didn’t know what this fancy term was!). The Magical Express pulled up around 7.20am and we were the last pick up, so straight to the airport for us.

We arrived around 8.10am and headed to terminal B for the Delta check in desk. Annoyingly, we couldn’t pay for our luggage in advance of the trip. After a few attempts with the automated machines, we soon managed to pay for them.

At bag drop, our bags were given ‘heavy’ stickers and weighed in at 51bs – slightly over the 50lb limit but the lady checking us in was lovely and didn’t seem concerned by the weight.



We restroomed pre security and took some time admiring the K-9 units. So cute, but didn’t get too close as you don’t want to mess with security.

Unlike last time I went through security as Orlando, this was a breeze and we were at the hand luggage check in 5 minutes. They did have a good check of one of the hand luggage cases that had a lot of sweets and oreos in!

Once our snacks had been thoroughly checked and we had completed our last ride in Orlando (the monorail) our minds turned to food! After an early departure, breakfast seemed like a long time ago.



Burger King was nearby. It looked like they were only serving breakfast items, but we asked and they said they were serving whoppers.

We got two whopper meals ($9.69 each), one with a bottle of water for the plane and one with a soft drink. I got a table while Ollie got the food. He somehow managed to sweet talk his way into free hash browns. (He manages this a lot – I often get free extras on a hot chocolate!)



After a browse in duty free, we headed to our gate (73) which was pretty busy and we waited there for about 15 minutes before boarding.



We had a later boarding group, and I was worried about room for our hand luggage as there had been a few announcements about some cases going into the hold. We had some breakables between us, so I wasn’t too keen on this.

There was then an announcement requesting adult parties of 2 or 3 for extra leg room seats. We went up to the desk and were offered this as a free upgrade. The person behind the desk was actually thanking us for taking the seats! You’re welcome

It meant we could board straight away and had no problem getting our luggage sorted. The person sat in our row of three actually tuned out to be a flight attendant off duty who was flying out for work. In the event of needing to open the airplane door, I was leaving this to her! She did offer Ollie gum though, which I wasn’t sure was an insult or not.

Enjoying our extra leg room -



The flight actually taxied 10 minutes early and took 2 hours 10 minutes to get to JFK. I was impressed that we got a snack and drink during the short flight.



I also ate my Minnie ear blondie. It wasn’t really what I was expecting and had an almond flavour to it. Very pretty though!



The flight went by very quickly, but that’s probably because I slept through most of it!

We got off the plane quickly, and were through to baggage check fairly quickly with it being an internal flight.

Ollie managed to whatsapp our pre-booked transfer using the airport wifi. There was a lot of confusion about where we were being picked up. Partly as we were told she was right by when she was actually 15 minutes away.

With traffic, our journey to our hotel was 1 hour 10 minutes. Unfortunately, our driver was bad (even by New York standards). She didn’t seem to be a fan of staying in a lane and preferred to drive over two at once. Don’t get me wrong, we saw a lot of dubious manoeuvres from many cars, but you almost need to do it with confidence/aggressiveness, and not dither over it! Our driver received a real range of colourful hand gestures from other road users! She also spent a lot of the journey texting

Fortunately, we arrived in one piece at the Hotel Moderne. We picked the hotel for a combination of its location and price. It was just off the top of Broadway, where we knew we’d be spending our evenings. It was quite a small hotel for New York, but was ideal for what we needed.

There was a long wait to check in, due to some computer issues when trying to check in some French guests.

We were soon on our way to room 204.

The bed was huge, and was pretty much the size of the room!



Weirdly, there was only one robe.



The bathroom was a good size –



Some interesting art work throughout –



We were on the same floor as the complementary guest lounge, which had water, hot drinks and fruit available all day.

We unpacked a few bits in the room and stowed the rest of our stuff as out of the way as possible.

I must admit, I was flagging a bit here and feeling a bit odd. I think the hustle and bustle of New York and missing Disney was getting to me. It was all a bit silly really, Ollie soon talked me round and we were heading out.

Our plan for the evening was the highline walk and Chelsea market, but first I needed a food related pick me up!

Our first stop was Luigi’s famous pizza, which was just around the corner. We shared a slice of chicken and mushroom pizza ($4.50) and added extra parmesan and oregano. No more deluxe dining plan for us! This perked me up a bit



We then stopped by CVS for cokes (full sugar to perk me up even more - $2.39 each) and a king size milka oreo bar ($2.19)

I was more than happy to let Ollie be in charge of navigation – I can get round Disney like a pro but real life navigating is challenge for me with my awful sense of direction.



Apparently, we got the subway from 59th St Columbus Cricle to Hudson Yards, changing at Time Square 42nd St.

We loaded $20 onto a subway ticket which we could both use and covered all of our journeys. We got a $1 bonus which covered the fee for the card. There were even a few dollars left on our card at the end which we gave to some friends visiting New York after us.

After getting of the subway we asked a policeman where the start of the Highline was as we couldn’t quite find it, but were soon on our way.

This was a lovely way to start our time in New York. The elevated rooftop walking route with gardens (formerly a railway) gave us some nice view points of New York. There’s some interesting art along the way and it’s nice to see patches of greenery in such a built up city. The sun was setting en route which was really pretty.





















We walked the whole length of the highline, and afterwards had to walk slightly back on ourselves to get to the Chelsea food market.



After a bit of a stock take, we stopped first at Los Tacos No 1 (of course we had checked this out on Tripadvisor first). We shared a quesadilla and what I think is a mula.





It was very busy here and justifiably so as it was really tasty.

After a bit more of a browse our next food item was from Crepe Suzette, where was shared a pesto chicken crepe ($12.85). They also did sweet crepes here that looked amazing. This was good but challenging to share.









Rather than walking back to the hotel, we took the subway back up most of the way. We also picked up a vanilla coke ($2.39) from a CVS en route to the subway station.

Apparently our subway route was from 14St & 8Av to 42nd St & Broadway (I was blindly following!)

We walked up Broadway towards Times Square, where I got really excited about seeing an actual Broadway show tomorrow!





I was a bit shocked at first by the very heavily armed security presence in Times Square and automatically assumed that something had happened. I then realised that this was standard security. Incredibly sad to realise that this was necessary, but it also made us feel safe.

We located the theatres, the TKTS ticket booth that we planned to visit tomorrow and Ellen’s Stardust Diner.

We stopped by a CVS (for the third time today) to pick up some Angry Orchard hard cider for the room ($9.99). Back in the room we got ready for bed and Ollie continued his tradition of bringing me hot chocolates (courtesy of the guest lounge) while he had a cider.

I discovered the show Practical Jokers when browsing the tv channels. I don’t know if I was quite tired, but I was finding this hilarious for some reason and dozed off quite happy.

A successful first evening in New York!

Day 23 - Circleline sightseeing cruise and Broadway