Day 32 - Central Park and Checking Out of the U.S

Our last cosy morning. The next two nights will be spent cramped up on an airport chair like or cuddling up to my fist on an airplane. Don’t think about that now – Daylight hours are burning away.

Central Park

The park is much, much bigger than you expect. It is massive. Beautiful civic spaces with benches, ponds, avenues, rock features and grassy stretches. About half the way up we peeled off back into the city to visit a place that claims to have the best choc chip cookies in the world. Once again, a long ass queue, but totally worth it. Incredible cookies – still have a little tear when I think about them.

Unfortunately we never got one of those double seat bikes because they were quite pricey and Barbara just wasn’t keen on taking on the traffic. You see, the bike store itself is actually one or two blocks away from the park so you would still have to take on the New Yorkers to actually get to the park. We bailed on the idea and chose just to walk it.

Back into the park where we (okay I) took a wrong turn and ended up miles and miles away from our Hotel. We ended up at the Guggenheim before I clicked I may have got my compass upside down kind of thing. We had to get a bus back as we needed to check out before 10am.

Look to the Slot for the Answer

This is when we learnt that some buses take coins, some busses take notes and some buses take both. So I jammed in the quarter followed by another quarter and then stood there like a spaz staring at this little ticket machine for a cash slot. No cash slot. I looked up at the driver and he spotted the tourist on my “please don’t make us walk” face. He let us on board thankfully and we squirmed to the back of the bus.

Top Tip Np.17: Carry quarters. I can't tell you how many machines, buses, info stations and just overall usefulness a roll of quarters is as you travel the US.

Checking Out 

It was quite sad checking out of The House. What a great experience of luxury and service provision. We opted out of the one Hundred dollar taxi ride (yip 100 dollars for walking distance) and headed out to Grand Central Station which lead us to a bus shuttle for the airport.  The Station is well worth the walk about as well. There isn’t as much to see as you may imagine as it is still a functional building and not a museum. It is just that huge hall area that you have seen in the movies but it is meticulously maintained and a beautiful work of architecture and history none the less.

We ended up at Newark Airport a couple of hours early and just took it easy in the waiting area. It was about a 6 hour wait which, if you’ve been to Newark, is a long ass wait. There are a handful of shops mostly selling stuff we couldn’t afford. So we backed ourselves for a little sleep on the benches there.

Here comes the Bang

It is about midnight when our sleep was interrupted by a loud banging sound – sounded like a roller shutter door rolling closed violently. It shook us all awake in the waiting area, we all looked at each other and then the siren went off. Ear piercing, soul penetrating emergency siren blasted through the hall ways and into our waiting area. 

It’s happening. We are part of something here. Something is happening. I don’t know if it is a fire, or a terrorist attack or a bomb threat but the emergency lights are on and the sirens are going mad. A group of people to our far left are pushing away at the emergency doors that won’t shift open. A group nearby by started to huddle and panic the eff out. The situation stated to pick up steam.

The siren goes, and goes and goes. Nothing. No movement up at the top of the passageway that leads to the main terminals. No follow up bang, no gun fire, no smoke. Just nothing except that siren. Then, over the loud speaker an out of breathe man: Sorry everyone. Technical issue. Nothing to worry about.

The siren stayed on for about an hour. Nonstop. My tinnitus was loving the company of newly murdered cells.

Anyway, be that as it was we boarded the plane and got ready to take off.

Central Park New York City TripAdvisor