Scary ride to our hotel
Trip Start
Jul 28, 2008
1
15
Trip End
Aug 06, 2008
Jamaica, New York
Monday, July 28, 2008
The trip to JFK is usually around 2 1/2 hours each way, so my husband happily agreed to pay for a driver to take Maggie and I in so he wouldn't have to.
Now anyone who knows me will tell you that I am one of those annoying people who is always early. I always arrive at a movie theater at least 15 minutes early, the airport two hours before the flight, am always the first person to arrive at a party (unless I drive around the block a few times in an attempt to be the second one), you get the idea.
Our driver was supposed to arrive at 3:30 so at 3:15 I was doing my best to get Maggie ready to walk out the door. Maggie, being a teenager, has learned to ignore my obsessive need to be early and my repeated attempts to speed her up. About 30 seconds later the car shows up which causes Maggie and I to race in opposite directions as I realize that I have packed our sweatshirts and that we will probably freeze in the car (or at least I will) if the air conditioning in blasting and Maggie realizes she had yet to put her ipod in her backpack.
Ipod and sweatshirts in place, we climb into the car and begin our journey to New York. We are not even out of Simsbury when Maggie commandeers both my Ipod (mine has movies on it) and my noise cancelling headphones and settles into a movie. I am stuck playing with my cell phone, looking out the window and chatting with the driver since I get motion sickness reading in a car.
It was an uneventful ride until we approached the city of Waterbury. There the heavens opened and it poured. Pull-over-by-the-side-of-the-road pour. Personally, I would have gotten off the highway in a heartbeat, but our driver Al, seemed totally unphased. He slowed down, because he had no choice, asked us if we were both buckled in (we were) and dealt with it.
I would say we were in and out of the downpours and thunderstorms until we got to around Westchester County. I carefully monitored the storm's progress on my cell phone when I wasn't emailing my husband whining about the storm.
By the time we hit the Whitestone Bridge, the rain had stopped. The severe weather apparently kept those who had any sense at all at home for the traffic was light (for NYC) and we made pretty good time to our hotel. Actually very good time since even though we hit all that nasty weather, we had made it to our hotel in about 3 hours.
Not bad. Al definitely earned the extra tip I slipped him.
Now about our hotel.
You could see JFK from the Hampton Inn our choice of accomodations for the night. Besides the spattering of hotels around us, there really wasn't much else to see.
The young man behind the front desk was very pleasant and soon we were up in our room. Clean and large enough for the two of us, it had the highest beds I've ever seen in a hotel room. I'm 5' 8" and my feet couldn't touch the floor. My daughter that it was great because she had to vault onto the bed.
After our long journey we were both hungry so we set off in search of food. The Hampton Inn doesn't serve food (besides breakfast) so we had our choice of ordering takeout or eating in the Holiday Inn that was connected to our hotel. Hating that thought of being cooped up in our room all night we headed to the Holiday Inn.
Bad choice. There is a reason why Jimmy Buffett sings about the bad food at a Holiday Inn and we were about to find out for ourselves.
We ate at "The Bistro". The name implies a relatively elegant restaurant but basically it was a glorified sports bar with slow service and an overpriced menu. We decided on a panni for Maggie, fruit plate for me and an asian platter to start. My food was okay, the asian platter was all deep fried but edible, Maggie's food was an undercooked gooey mess. She could barely look at it let alone eat it. All this, a beer and soda for $60.
I love eating in NYC.
We went back to our hotel only to see a pizza delivery man. "Next time." I promised Mags.
Getting on the elevator, I held the door open for a pilot who was dragging his carryon behind him. He thanked me and then said "You're not from around here are you?"
"I'm from Connecticut, that's sort of from around here."
He smiled. "No, I meant I could tell that you weren't from NY." He paused. "You have manners."
Maggie laughed about that for days...
