thursday in NYC (JFK>Manhattan>Brooklyn)

I don’t know if it was the terrible internet in the hotel (Holiday Inn Express, I was going to give you a try, but now I am going to stick with the predictability of Fairfield) or my pinched nerve or the exhaustion from “networking” (something I don’t do well and would rather avoid overall), but I haven’t posted about our five days in NYC at all. Not one bit. Besides our adventures in packing.

On Thursday, we landed at JFK. My memories from JFK are of a dirty, confusing, impossible to navigate airport. Granted, I think the last time I was there was 20 years ago as a teenager in NYC flying off to Japan and other foreign places. I was so relieved to find us walking less than a quarter mile from the plane to the AirTrain; the AirTrain was why I had chosen JFK instead of LGA as our NYC airport — I’m not a huge fan of taxis, especially when traveling with kids. There were helpful people everywhere, in case the multitude of signs weren’t helpful enough.

AirTrain to Howard Beach was smooth and easy, but paying to get off of it was crazily confusing, for absolutely no reason. If I was a foreigner or hadn’t “put on my NY”, I would have been overwhelmed. However, I had done my homework and knew that I could avoid the “hawkers” and buy my MTA card from a machine. Dear MTA, get rid of the hawkers!

We took the A train all the way to Manhattan. Getting off the train, it was well past lunch time. I was too tired to argue with the hispanic, not italian, guy who sold us the pizza and proceeded to add a “tax” because I used my credit card. Annoying, but it was not worth it for me to argue at that point.

We found our way over to Books of Wonder, a fantastic kindie bookstore on 18th Street. The girls were sorely disappointed that Peter Glassman wasn’t there but were happy to pick up a couple of new books, nonetheless.

From there, we walked over to Union Square and the fabulous new playground. It was getting hot and humid at that point. My leg was starting to ache. I needed to sit down. I thought Chloe saw me head off to the bench, but she didn’t. By the time Camille was able to find her — in a small, but crowded, fenced-in playground — Chloe was already in tears for having lost us. Both girls had family business cards in their pockets — a simple, but effective, anti-lost method we use.

As soon as the girls were tired, we walked a few steps (good planning helps), to the N train which zipped us across the Manhattan Bridge right to our stop in an express sort of way. We made our way down 4th Ave in Brooklyn and then across a very desolate Butler Ave to our hotel. After we checked in and relaxed a bit, we ventured out to find a nice restaurant in Park Slope and some frozen yogurt, then back again to the hotel to blog and watch tv before sleeping.