… home.
Today is probably the coldest that I have ever felt.
We started the day at -8°C that felt like -16°C.
Before I talk about today, let me finish talking about last night.
Last night MBW and I went to a concert at Carnegie Hall in NYC. Keith and Kristyn Getty were doing their Christmas concert – and it was a good one. Probably not what I was expecting, but to see anything in Carnegie Hall was pretty exciting.
Before the concert – which started at 7.30pm – we wandered around Times Square and 5th Avenue looking at the lights and enjoying the snow storm.
We decided to splurge for our last dinner in NYC at Angelo’s Coal Oven Pizzeria on 7th Ave and had pasta … as you do. It was good too.
Then, because we couldn’t warm up, we went to Carnegie Hall early and sat inside to escape the cold.
While we experienced “snow squalls” on 5th Ave, we heard that they had a total white-out on 7th Ave. The snow there was so heavy and intense.
I know that you’ve seen these snow pictures before, but they still excite me 🙂
Missed it by that much 🙁
Then the concert. It finished some time after 10.15pm – way past my bedtime – and then home on the subway. We finally got home around 11.30pm.
It had obviously been snowing heavily at Brooklyn.
Today is our last day in NYC and the USA.
We had already finished all of the food that we had bought and drunk all of the milk. Well to be completely truthful, we still had a couple of packets of 2 minute noodles that I objected to buying in the first place … and we were never going to have them for breakfast.
So the cupboard was bare, but there were food places to explore in Brooklyn – just around the corner.
So we rugged up. How much colder can -8°C that feels like -16°C possibly be? Can it be colder that -3°C?
You bet that it can!
-8°C that feels like -16°C is so cold that it is in your bones. It is so cold that your ears hurt. It is so cold that it makes your eyes water. It takes your breath away. Your feet go numb … you get the idea.
We had a couple of bakery options around the corner. We went to “Dough” first, which happens to be a donut shop. Yes, I know what you are thinking.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was closed.
Option 2 was the Clementine Bakery. It was open and had people inside, so we took that as a good sign.
On the door was a big sign that said “No Espresso – machine broken”.
We took that as a bad sign. A very bad sign.
Fortunately their drip coffee machine was still working, so we had 2 large coffees with hot milk, and a couple of muffins. It was good.
We had a notion that we would be able to get out amongst it again this morning for the very last time. It was our last chance to be subway ninjas … but we still needed to finish our packing … so realistically we knew that we didn’t really stand a chance of getting back into Manhattan today.
We decided to stay local, so instead we took a walk the long way (AKA the scenic route) back to our AirBnB after coffee and muffins.
The long way wasn’t actually a long way, BTW, but probably better described as not the most direct route.
To be completely honest, we really only walked 3 sides of our block rather than the one side back home.
But I have to tell you – even that was an adventure.
Sliding on ice, shaking with the cold, having the wind cut straight through you. Even with the added thermals that we hadn’t normally been wearing, the cold was actually painful.
I was pretty sure that I’d lost a couple of toes.
These New Yorkers are many things, but they are a tough crowd. How they put up with that for 2-3 months every year is beyond me.
A couple of observations from our little walk though.
There are lots of cars in NYC. Lots and lots. In Brooklyn where we have been staying, no one seems to have a garage or any off-street parking. Everyone parks on the street.
So there are a lot of cars parked on the street. All jostling for a position.
I showed a picture the other day from our tour in Harlem. Cars park very close together – both beside each other and nose-to-tail.
There is obviously an issue where people park by Braille – they reverse in until they touch the car behind, then adjust their position.
This obviously causes scratches and damage to cars, so people put these “Bumper Busters” on their cars to protect them … or maybe to protect the cars that they back into.
The other interesting thing that we noticed was that the area we are living in this time is quite different to the part of Brooklyn we stayed in last year – even though they are not very far apart.
Last year we stayed in an area that seemed to be populated with what I would probably describe as historic brownstones.
They were all quite well kept, nicely looked after, and appeared to be individual houses. From memory, they were all pretty expensive too.
Here is a picture of where we stayed last year. You can see why I have referred to it as Sesame Street.
The area where we stayed this year is probably best described as brick units. They are less well looked after and some appear to have even been knocked down to make room for new development.
All of this happening just down our street but we didn’t know – because we hadn’t gone that way.
So we got home, peeled off all of those layers, and packed our bags.
You’ve seen pictures of the outside of our AirBnB in Brooklyn, but here are some inside pictures.
We’ve been staying at Frances’ place at 143 Lexington Ave, Brooklyn.
We didn’t need to leave for the airport until about 12.30 or 1.00pm for a 3.30pm flight from JFK to LAX. It is about a 45 minute trip in an Uber.
To be honest, we weren’t really sure how long before the flight we needed to be there.
While technically it is only a domestic flight, our limited experience in USA airports – and NYC airports in particular – tells us that the security people are thorough in their screening and processing approach, and have a very low tolerance for people who don’t know exactly where they are going or what they need to do to get there.
And they have absolutely no tolerance for people that don’t understand their version of the English language.
Take a wrong turn, or present yourself at the wrong queue, and you are treated as something between an idiot and a bad child.
But we had another reason for getting to the airport early.
Delta Airlines, in their infinite wisdom, decided to seat MBW and myself in different rows on the flight, even though it was evident that we were on the same booking and travelling together.
Every request that we made to have this decision reconsidered was met with “you’ll need to discuss that with …” and sent us off to see someone else.
In the end, we were told that the flight was “now under control of the airport staff and we would need to raise this at the airport, but you will need to get there a bit early”.
So get there a bit early we did. And raise it with the airport staff we did, and we were told that “you’ll need to discuss that with …” and sent us off to see someone else.
Long story short? We sat in different rows on the same flight because Delta Airlines does not understand the meaning of customer service.
Or maybe they just hate Australians.
So here we are in LAX, waiting to board our last flight to BNE – home.
We are feeling both happy and sad about that.
But it will be nice to sleep in my own bed for a change.
Here is today’s song: Home (Michael Bublé).
Ciao
#G&KTAKEUSA2019