New York, New York ("And I Have to Live with a Boy!")

Sorry again for taking a week off the blog world, but our trip to New York me being sick another work trip for me to Atlanta a few days after NYC kept me a little bit busy.

Heading to/from New York was extremely eventful, yet again. I had a hellish time traveling to/from Chicago for work, a terrible time getting home from DC so it wasn’t a surprise when our trip to New York became stupidly complicated.

We left from Cincinnati and when we weren’t boarding our 7 a.m. flight by 7: 30 a.m., I knew something was up. Pretty soon, the gate agent announced that the plane we were supposed to get on, had been struck by lightning the night before and had mechanical issues. Delayed indefinitely! I waited in line at a different gate to change out flight, and the US Airways gate agent switched us to a Delta non-stop flight that left at 9:35 a.m. Hooray! We headed over to that gate, only to find out that the flight was delayed for an hour. Boo.

Once we got on the plane, we headed to the runway and then we heard the engines shut off. That’s never good. Our pilot came on and said that the visibility at LaGuardia was less than 1/8 of a mile and they need at least 1/2 mile of visibility to land. This was when I looked over at my meteorologist husband and just shook my head. We waited on the runway for an hour and finally took off around noon.

Did I mention that I was missing the entire USA vs. CAN Olympic game, AND we hadn’t eaten lunch because my husband suggested we wait until we land in NYC before we ate? I was a little bit cranky, to say the least.

An hour and a half into our flight, the pilot told us that the visibility hadn’t cleared up like they had hoped, so we circled LaGuardia for an hour. In turbulence. In circles. Did I mention I get motion sickness easily?

THEN the pilot came on after an hour of circling to tell us we were being diverted to Harrisburg, PA because we were going to run out of fuel. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP!

This is what getting diverted looks like: miserable.

However, I will say thank you to Delta/Harrisburg airport for providing bottled water, snacks and buying pizza while we waited. American, US Airways or United would NEVER do that.

Finally, we boarded at 4:40 p.m. once the airport visibility was up to 1/2 a mile. The only problem here? THE CREW WAS GOING TO TIME OUT AT 5 p.m.!! Remember when my flight got CANCELED in Chicago after I boarded and we TAXIED TO THE RUNWAY because the crew timed out? We were 20 minutes away from that happening again!

Delta ROCKS and they got us boarded, fueled and did the safety announcements just moments before 5 p.m. Then, the pilot came on and said “Well folks, we have 4 minutes…wait, now 3 minutes…to be wheels up or this flight is getting canceled. It’s going to be an uncomfortable taxi to the runway.” He wasn’t kidding! We turned onto the runway so fast, I thought our plane was going to tip over. But right at 5 p.m., the wheels were up and we were safely on our way to LaGuardia. The entire plane burst into applause. TOO MUCH STRESS!

This is why I now have severe flying anxiety. I just can’t handle all of the unknowns and possibilities of getting delayed, diverted or canceled due to so many reasons that I’ve experienced in the last month alone: maintenance, weather, crew timing out, etc. I HATE AIR TRAVEL!

We landed in NYC right during rush-hour traffic so it took us a bit to get to our hotel, but once we did, we took a gigantic nap in our room! Ha! We had been up since 4:30 a.m. and got to the airport around 5 a.m. so an 8 p.m. nap after a 12 hour travel day was totally necessary. Once we were up, we ventured out to find one thing: BEERS!

We stayed close to Foley’s NYC so we headed there for brewskis and dinner. Delicious!

Once we were done with dinner, we headed back to our hotel to meet up with The Schur’s! They live in Boston and came down to spend the weekend in NYC with us. Too fun!

I had to be up super early on Saturday for work meetings, but wrapped up around noon. Just in time to walk around and see some sights!

We had lunch at Carnegie Deli – so delicious!

And a New York cheesecake, of course.

We saw some more sights, including Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library before heading back to our hotel to relax a bit before dinner.

Saturday evening, we ventured down to Greenwich Village (my favorite neighborhood ever) and had before-dinner drinks at The Blind Tiger.

And we had dinner at Daddy-O, of course! It’s my NYC tradition now.

We had a beautiful morning on Sunday so we ate a pizza lunch outside in Bryant park and walked around a bit more before Katie and Jake had to head back up to Boston.

Kev and I did a bit more sightseeing, including taking the Staten Island Ferry to check out Lady Liberty herself. Gorgeous views!

We also had dinner with Kevin’s cousins (who live in NYC) Sunday night!

Monday was another day for extreme sightseeing, as we started the day at the Today Show! Usher was there, as well as the mayor of NYC and some Olympians.