From LA to New York

Friday 8 May 2009 (again!):

It was a short walk to Terminal 4 to check-in for our flight to New York with Virgin America. We had time to catch some breakfast; beer, wine, oh and food, before boarding. From here it all felt a little surreal but we put some of this down to our tired state.

We had splurged on first class tickets so we were able to board first and get settled. After that it seemed that an endless stream of people boarded the plane with the most amazing array of carry-on bags. There was everything from full sized suitcases to a guitar and a rather large dog, apparently ok if it's a service dog! We learned later that you can take any dog on board as long as you put in it a box and that box fits under the seat in front of you. Nice to know!

In charge of the first class cabin was Velda, a bundle of energy that was like a little (but loud) puppy just wanting to please. Before long she had us slipping a cocktail of absinthe and orange juice (refreshing!) before we changed it to absinthe and sprite. Mel even scored an almost full baby bottle to take with her. We didn't have the heart to tell Velda that absinthe is in fact not vodka!

The safety demonstration was hilarious, the flight attendant got distracted talking to Mel and Ben and as it was a short taxi to take off, she rushed through it omitting the life vest demonstration. She informed us we didn't need that as we were not flying over water.....except for the part straight after take off and coming into New York!

Now back to the absinthe. As you know we were a little tired so after 2 of these very potent cocktails, we passed out. This was actually as good thing as not long after we woke up, we were descending into New York's John F Kennedy International Airport. What a way to kill 5 hours!!

Mel worked out that sitting across from us was Jesse James, Sandra Bullock's rather heavily tattooed husband. Our first celebrity spotting (Mike Goldman from Big Brother didn't count).

Time to collect our bags and catch a cab to Manhattan. It's a fixed $45 (plus tip) from JFK to Manhattan passing through some not so pretty parts of Jamaica and Queens before travelling under the Hudson river via the Midtown Tunnel and on to our hotel right on Times Square. It took almost exactly 24 hours from home in Brisbane to the hotel in New York.

We checked in dumped our bags and hit Times Square. The flashing lights and crowded energy was a little overwhelming so we soon found a nice irish pub for dinner. As our bodies were about to shut down we headed back to the hotel and crashed out at around 8.30pm.

That was a long day!!