Dan and I had the opportunity to take a special trip to celebrate out 10 year anniversary.
My vote was for somewhere warm.
Dan wanted to go to New York. His argument was that every Christmas movie you can think of was filmed in New York, so where better a place to visit during the Holidays? I was more worried about the crowds and the cold, but then he told me we could go see wicked, and I was sold!
Dan's parents and sister Katherine and her family watched our kids for us so we could go. There is no way we could have gone if it wasn't for them, so Thank you!!!
After dropping off the kids, we flew out of the Seattle Airport on a 7:00 AM flight, Friday morning
6 hours later, we arrived at JFK. At least one of us enjoyed the long flight. :)
We debated about how to get to our hotel, but finally chose to just take a cab. Although it would be the most expensive choice, we didn't want to spend the time with a shuttle van, or get lost on the bus or subway.
Big Mistake.
I didn't think we would make it to the hotel alive.
We waited in line at the airport and got into a taxi like this one:
It was 5:00 NY time, a.k.a "rush hour". Lots of traffic. Apparently our cab driver didn't get the memo. He drove 70-80 miles an hour the entire time. How did he maintain this speed in rush hour? Lots of honking, slamming of breaks at the LAST second, and lots of off and on ramps.
He must have been very confident, this 19 (?) yr old boy driver, because he was texting the entire time.
I was terrified. Sweaty hands, white knuckles, nausea, terrified.
When we finally arrived at the hotel, I could barely walk, my knees were so wobbly. We vowed never to step inside another taxi again. I realize it is a different culture, but I will NEVER do that again.
We stayed at the Hotel Wellington. It came as a package deal with our flight, so I was pretty proud of my find.
The lobby looked great. The pictures on the website looked decent. Not 5 Stars, but good enough for what we were willing to pay.
From the lobby, we were directed to the East wing:
Notice the two elevators on either side of the doorway? I think that was the main hotel. We were directed down the hall, and through another door way.
Then down these stairs, and our tiny elevators were on the right. You could maybe fit 3 or 4 people in them. I think this was the servants quarters originally.
There were about 5 rooms on our floor. We never saw anyone on our floor, and only heard someone once or twice. Our room was pretty small, and the bathroom was tiny. "Romantic" I guess you could say. It wasn't as clean as I had hoped, but we weren't paying $$$ either.
After we explored the hotel, we decided to walk around NYC.
The location of our hotel was fantastic. We were next door to Carnegie Hall (although we never saw anything there, or went inside), and only a few blocks from Times Square.
It was cold that night. I wore long johns, two sweaters, my coat, gloves and a scarf. I never wear a scarf. I was barely able to stay warm. :)
The lights and the action was awesome though.
Although some of the advertisements I would have preferred not to have seen.
We returned to our hotel, rubbed our aching feet, but excited to explore more of the city in the morning.
