Flying to New York

I had a very legitimate reason for not blogging last week, and here it is;

I was in New York!

*Squeal!

I've never been to the Big Apple before and having only seen it in the movies and of course Sex & the City, I didn't really know what I would make of it.

So let's start at the very beginning of the adventure shall we? In a week of NYC blogs.

So, it really started the day before we left when I tried to check us in to our flight, which we booked through BA but that was code shared with American Airlines. With BA you can log in and choose seats 24 hours before your flight. With AA, the seats are given over to the airport 24 hours in advance, and the gods of bad plane seating had allocated us seats at the back in the middle of a row of five.

Frustrated and slightly worried about how Pa and his new hip would cope being shoehorned into a tiny row, I rang the airline, armed with a list of yes/no questions so it didn't matter if I didn't hear. And they were very helpful.

Could I do anything about our allocated seating? Yes

Could they do anything about it? No

Would I have to fix it at the airport? Yes

Would this mean getting there early? Yes

And so we did. Embarrassingly early. But it worked. We were allocated bulkhead seats at the front of cattle class with room for Pa and also good for me as when the flight attendants spoke to me, they could crouch down to my level and make it easier to lipread.

What was even better is that even in economy there were plug sockets, so I was able to plug in my DVD player and watch subtitled movies the whole way. Subtitled New York-themed movies!

The service on the flight was also excellent. Our flight attendant was amazing. I explained to him I was deaf and every announcement that was made he came to check I knew what was going on. He even attempted to make me laugh right after he told me the flight crew were being seated 45 minutes early because it was going to be a very bumpy and snowy landing.

Not being a massive fan of turbulence, I ended up being brilliantly distracted by the Fab Family sat to our right.

The lovely guy told me all about the places where I should eat in New York, he explained why it was more bumpy at some times than others, and he told me how much he loved New York City.

It was amazing. I forgot about the turbulence and the fact that I had an amazing city to discover began to sink in.

We bade them farewell at JFK and hopped in a yellow taxi in the snow storm.

Three days later by the restrooms in the basement of Century 21 (which is basically TK Maxx on acid) I looked up to see the Fab Family right there in front of me.

On the big island that is Manhattan, I had bumped into the only people I knew of in the city, in the shadow of the former World Trade Centre. What a bizarre coincidence?

It was fabulous to see them again and share my experience of New York – although I never did get to go to the Brandy Library…  but there is always next time…

But what I did do was walk for miles and miles and miles and miles… but I will tell you all about that tomorrow.