New York here we come!!
We had to take a shuttle bus at 3am this morning to get to the airport on time. We made it with plently of time to spare and were one of the first people to check in. This was lucky because I was way of my luggage allowance (and had been when i left Sydney) but I was not charged a fee for excess, which was really good because it would have been a fortune. It was a long wait going through customs because you have to take your shoes off and get them scanned. I ended up taking my shoes off 3 times on 3 separate occassions!! I suppose it is better safe than sorry.
We had pretty good seats for this flight, we were in a exit row so had plenty of leg room and there were only 2 seats per row as well!! Bree had fallen asleep before the plan had even taken off. We were waiting a while because it was raining and there was a line of planes waiting for take off. In the end it was a really smooth flight. An 8 hour flight, and for 5 of those hours Bree and I slept, which was REALLY good as it made the plane ride seem really fast!! The rest of the time we spent doing puzzles, that seemed to pass the time too.
We arrived at JFK airport and again it was a long wait in customs, but once we had shown our passports, it was a quick walk to collect our baggage and before we knew it we were in a yellow taxi heaqding for Manhattan. OMG the cabbies are crazy drivers in New York!! They speed up when they should be breaking and they beep all the time!!! I was freaking out!! I was glad when we made it to our hotel in one piece! Our hotel for tonight was the Pennsylvania Hotel, it was a hige hotel in Midtown, directly opposite Madison Square Garden. It seemed to take forever to reach our room and the hallways were kind of eerie. Our room was the last one on the floor, and was kind of old but ok for one night. We were still pretty tired so we walked down and got MacDonalds. The meals are HUGE there!! America's medium meal is the same as Australia's large meal so we were pretty full afterwards. We pretty much had a shower and in bed by 8pm. We had a contiki tour starting tomorrow and we had to check into another hotel. Our time in New York was going to be BUSY BUSY BUSY!
