Finished packing, in bed by midnight and we left home 4am. Easy drive to San Francisco Airport; smooth check in and bag drop. And we were surprised and happy to discover the Delta lounge opened at 4:30am and we had the correct credentials and flight type to be allowed entry. Tasty little treat for breakfast. Boarded plane and left a few minutes after expected time.
It was a direct flight and we arrived on time to New York about 4pm; exited the plane, found our luggage and the Viking Cruise representative. After a short wait we got onto our coach for a 10 minute drive to the TWA hotel where we are spending the night. I felt like we circled the entire airport before getting to the hotel.
What a fun hotel- it has a 60’s theme and mimics an airport. It also has lots of memorabilia from TWA- an old airline that no longer flys. It had a full sized TWA airplane on the grounds and the hotel check in was an old TWA check in counter. I was bummed that I didn’t realized they had a rooftop infinity pool until it was time to leave- will have to come back.
The stay included a dinner that was served from 6pm to 9pm but Tibor and I left about 5:45pm for our whirlwind visit to New York City.
We took the airport train to the subway. After about an hour on the subway we exited and walked 10 minutes to the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall terminal. We were so excited with how quickly and easily it all went because we were on the Staten Island Ferry at sunset and got to see the Statue of Liberty with the setting sun. After about 25 minutes we got to Staten Island where we got off and walked right back onto the return ferry. It was significantly more crowded than the trip to the island.
On the way back we got to see the lights come on the city buildings.
Hoped back onto the subway and headed to Penn Station where we exited the subway and walked to the Empire State Building. We had tickets to go to the 86th floor. There were no crowds and we skipped all the displays and went right up to the 80th floor; took some pictures which didn’t turn out too well because of the glare of the glass. Then up to the 86th floor where we had much better pictures because it was open air observation deck with no glass. I was happy there were bars to prevent folks from falling.
Since we were way past the time where the free dinner at the hotel was served, we stopped for pizza and beer. We’re telling ourselves that we had New York Pizza but I’m not convinced that was the type of pizza we had. In any case, it was delicious. Tibor had a large beer and I had a small beer and neither were New York Beer. Tibor had Sam Adam’s and I had Dos Equis. Turns out the large beer was huge- 32 ounces!
Walked back to Penn Station and took the subway and airport train back to our hotel.
Felt safe the entire evening and there were many restaurants and stores open when we finished our pizza about 10pm.
We arrived back to our hotel about 11:15pm after throughly enjoying our visit to New York.
