Stumbling to New York

Saturday, February 07, 2009 Road Junkies 0 Comments

NEW YORK BY BOROUGH, CHAPTER 1:  IN WHICH THERE'S AN OINTMENT IN THE FLY

Day 1:  Atlanta to Manhattan.  Though we've visited New York on numerous occasions, our stays have been primarily centered in Manhattan.  New York City was originally confined to Manhattan Island and the smaller surrounding islands that comprised New York County.  When the city outgrew the island, it began annexing territory on the mainland.  Finally in 1898, all those areas were consolidated under a new city charter.  Under that agreement, five boroughs were officially established.  By action of the state legislature, a borough was defined as a form of government administration created by the merger of city and county governments.  The five boroughs established as part of New York City were Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.  On this trip, we plan to visit and search for letterboxes in each borough.


With this plan in place, we were pumped as we drove to the Atlanta airport this morning. What a pleasant surprise awaited us when we breezed right through the security line and were at our departure gate only an hour after leaving home! Foolishly, we thought it might be a good omen for the trip. Alas, Delta had other plans.

We boarded the plane on time for our 9:40 flight. After a half hour wait on the tarmac, the pilot announced that maintenance was completing a needed repair to the water supply for one of the restrooms. Once that was done, we had another announcement that some sort of electrical problem was preventing our taking off and that maintenance had been called to check out this new issue.

Needless to say, we were more than ready when the announcement came about 10:30 that we were returning to the gate. With two patches needed after boarding before the flight could leave, this was not the plane we wanted to fly on. The flight was cancelled, and all the passengers were assigned to later Delta flights to New York.

Since we were in seats next to each other and had the same last name, it was not evident to the Delta employees who rebooked the passengers on new flights that we were traveling together. So Ken was put on a 12:40 flight and Dianne on a 2:40. After getting that sorted out, we were each given a $7.00 meal voucher since our delay would take us through lunch. Pretty generous, we thought, until we had lunch at an airport restaurant.

A $7 food voucher doesn't go far in airport restaurants.
We finally arrived at LaGuardia around 4:45 p.m., caught a cab into Manhattan and picked up the keys to our home for this week. It's a very small one bedroom apartment on W. 51st Street near the corner of 7th Avenue. We love the location, and having a "full" kitchen and a separate bedroom is very nice.

A bit of blogging at the expansive kitchen table
After a walk over to the neighborhood supermarket for a few essentials, we were too tired to do anything else but make a big salad, eat, and call it a night.

SATURDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2009