Road Trip Diaries

Here we are again, setting off to the USA. I know I keep saying we should go to a different country, but the circumstances are a little different this time. The main difference is that it’s winter — we have no experience of America in the cold. The other difference is that we’re not hiring a car at all! We’re actually going to stay in the same city, sleep in the same room, for a whole week.

We drove to Heathrow, and parked in its Pink Elephant car park. “The world’s favourite car park” according to the decal on its buses. I didn’t see all that many people enthusing about it, but it seemed to provide a car parking space and transport us to the terminal, which is all it really needs to to — as long as our car is still there when we return.

We’ve flown a good number of times, so there shouldn’t have been any problems — but in fact I almost repeated my “took a pair of rusty scissors in hand luggage” embarassment, by emptying my pockets into the x-ray tray only to find a penknife. “Oh Christ”, I said.

The correct procedure is to be apologetic, and allow them to confiscate the knife. This I did, and we were through security and on our way.

The leg room on AA flight 107 was comfortable, but the in-flight entertainment was rubbish. Instead I provided my own: Lawrence Sterne, Super Furry Animals and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on the DS.

We landed, and got a taxi to our hotel — the Buckingham in midtown Manhattan, where a very helpful man showed us to our suite (yes!), and we were ashamed not to be able to tip him, since we had nothing but $20 bills.

For the price, the room is lovely. We have a little kitchen, and a living room which will become Phoenix’ room when she arrives.

Very tired, but hungry, we popped out for a bite and a beer, and opted for the Astro diner, where Debbie insisted we’d have something small. So I chose a Pastrami sandwich, whereupon she chose a chilli burger and fries. So in fact, her meal was huge, and she forced fries on me.

On the way home, we popped into a drugstore and bought some supplies, including a copy of Time Out — and finally got some change for tipping.

And then, we slept.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under NYC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.