New York - Day1

{Michelle} Darryl fetched us at 11:00am and took us to the airport. We had a drink and then checked through. We had a good flight to JHB and then found the “Ekaya” restaurant and pub, had a burger and then sat and waited until 6:30pm to board our flight to New York. While Dereck found a comfortable couch to relax on, I wandered around looking at the duty free shops. We checked in at 6:30pm and got settled on the plane. It wasn’t full at all (only 117 passengers and the max they can seat was 300 odd). Dereck managed to get a 3 seater and so could spread himself out to sleep. I had a double seater and had a fairly okay night’s rest. We got woken up at 3:30am when we landed in Dakar and the cleaners came on and then US security, checking all the empty seats and we all had to take out our hand luggage to verify that it belonged to each of us. This took about an hour and then we were off again. We got woken up again at 12 noon (SA time) but 6:00 US time for breakfast. Total time on the plane was 19hrs !!!We went through customs quickly, caught a terminal train to get to the underground, got on the underground and about 30 mins later got off at the 7th Avenue stop. We were about 2 blocks away from hotel – the Wellington which is on the corner of 7th Ave and 56nd street. The SA drum majorettes team were there as well, but busy checking out. Our room was not ready so we left our suitcase with the porter and went walking down 7th avenue in the rain!! We walked all the way down to Times Square stopping at a Starbucks for coffee & hot chocolate on the way. Here they don’t do pay as you go, so we have had to go to another Starbucks to buy a card and we are busy trying to work out how we get connected. Luckily it is right across the road from our hotel which is still not ready. Today is really going to be a long day, as we have lost 6 hours and need to stay awake and go to bed at their time otherwise, our clocks will just be out!!

{Dereck} Finally got our room at 2pm, dropped our bags and headed out on foot down 6th Ave, across 42nd St to Times Square. Went to Hard Rock Café for lunch and had 10oz burgers under Keith Moon’s (The Who) pants !! Had a Heineken Draught which cost a whopping $13. Hope the beer here is going to be cheaper than that else I’m going teetotal or broke ! Looked around Times Square & 42nd St for a while then headed back to hotel to bed and get our internal clocks back to normal.

Wide eyes signing off ...