It’s easy, looking back from Newark Liberty International Airport, as I sip at a large Cardamom Coffee and eat my way through my body-weight in Timbits, to feel a little nostalgia for everything trying to fall apart yesterday. Some might say that getting stuck in school traffic at 8am was unnerving enough. Some could argue the day and a half spent moving the contents of the apartment back to the familial home in Carrickfergus was like being trapped in a small room with a particularly hungry rhesus monkey. Few would suggest, however, that United Airlines staff telling us they couldn’t let us aboard the plane, as we didn’t have a sufficiently detailed itinerary, wasn’t a tiny step too far.
Cue panic.
You might be surprised to learn that Belfast International Airport has a single computer terminal on which Windows 3.1 seems to run. It was certainly an early incarnation of Internet Explorer, and I could hear the modem creaking its dial-up tones. Yet through sheer force of will (and shouting) we achieved the impossible: if we couldn’t get a visa for Brazil at 9am on a Thursday morning, then we would book a short flight out of the country within our 90 day tourist visa window (this requirement really ought to be a little more prominent within backpackers travel guides). Turkish Airlines courteously obliged, £150 flight from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires on 24th February, allowed us to satisfy all and sundry.
Thank feck.
On through security, Starbucks Christmas Blend in hand, to the gate, on the plane, 7hrs of slightly shaking flying and some ropey movies (or, in my case, Portuguese verbs) and we arrive in Newark.
$25 train tickets to Penn Station. $2.75 subway journey to Christopher Street. Disorientated walk to The Jane Hotel. Tiny, very very hot, bedroom (delightful interiors, to be fair, and very pleasant staff). Deserted New York City thanksgiving streets. Almost everything is closed. A swamp of neon at Times Square. An awful lot of Irish Pubs. Things looking very familiar. And, eventually, the Rockefeller Centre and skating and Radio City and a big fecking tree and big fecking baubles. Merry Christmas too all.
Meet the inlays. Have dinner. Look exhausted. Have a beer. Tell some stories. Tell some more stories. Drink a Rolling Rock. MMMMMMMMMMM. Subway back to the hotel.
So I can feel nostalgic about it, given that we were offered the chance to not come.
Daniel “Well, now that we’re leaving would you rather have paid the extra £500 to fly direct from London?”.
Sarah “Definitely not”.
NEXT : HOUSTON AIRPORT!
AFTER THAT : RIO DE JANEIRO!
AFTER AFTER THAT : NO MORE BLOODY SURPRISES!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment