Last weekend, my sister Lisa had to go to New York for a business trip. She invited me to come along so we could hang out and do some sightseeing in NYC for the weekend.
We planned the trip, and I hoped it would be warmish by then. Since we have had such cold weather lately, I was a little worried about being cold all weekend on the East coast.
The weekend turned out to be so much fun, and the weather turned out OK.
On Thursday morning (March 6th) my son Chris dropped me off at the airport.
I have to admit, I absolutely LOVE the Kansas City International airport. It's design makes it so easy to get in and out quickly. The airport is made of 3 big circle buildings. You pull your car to the inside of the circle and get dropped off right in front of your departing gate.
The planes pull up to the outside of the circles. No long walk through the inside of the building to the terminals. When Chris dropped me off in front of the airport, I was about 50 yards from the ramp to my plane. It's so easy to get around this airport compared to other airports I have been to.
(web image)
I got to the airport a little early, so I waited a little bit before I went through the TSA security checkpoint.
While I sat there people watching, I noticed a woman pacing around excitedly waiting for some passengers to come off of a plane that just arrived. She was obviously eager to see someone and since I'm nosy, I hung around to see who she was meeting.
As the passengers came out of the plane, I understood her excitement. Her daughter, a US Soldier was coming HOME!!! The greeting and hug between this mom and daughter was so incredibly touching and I had to look away so they wouldn't notice I had tears in my eyes too.
After I composed myself I also noticed there were other soldiers arriving too. One daddy soldier was throwing his 3 year old daughter up in the air and catching her. I was so touched to see all of this. That was my best people-watching experience, ever.
When it was time to go through security, I grabbed a tub to put my shoes and purse in, so it could go through the x-ray machine. The tub I grabbed had the perfect message written just for me on the inside of the tub.
It was a nice reminder of my Grateful Dead hippie days that seem so long ago:
My flight to LaGuardia was uneventful. I was lucky enough to get the whole row of seats to myself for the 3+ hour flight.
My sister landed just after I did, and we met in the baggage area.
We collected our bags and got in our car to take us to Manhattan.
We got to go through a long tunnel. (We don't have tunnels like this in Kansas)
When we arrived at the Marriott, it was already dark out.
This is the Marriott in Herald Square. It's in mid-town Manhattan. I didn't get a piture of the outside of the hotel, so I pulled one off the web:
(web image)
The lobby of the hotel was on the 2nd floor:
We checked in and got our room key cards and headed to the 13th floor.
This is the hallway going to our room. This building used to be a bank before Marriott bought it a few years ago. I thought it was interesting that someones office was here before.
I took these pics the next day, but I'll add them in here:
As soon as we dropped our bags, I went right to the window to see what our view was.
It was very "New Yorkish" with buildings and traffic down on the streets. I could hear honking and city noise down below. It was very different from home in the Kansas suburbs.
We took a walk outside to see if we could find food.
We found this Irish Pub/restaurant about a half block down. Our dinner was good, and hit the spot!
Inside Jack Demsey's pub:
After we ate, we walked around a little bit, but we were both tired from traveling. Lisa had to work early the next day, so we went back to the hotel, read books, and went to bed around 11ish.
Day 2 is HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment