30th December 2018 - Sunday - New York , New York

We got to the Edmonton airport by 5 am but the checkin went awry when the kiosk could not find Margie's reservation. The Westjet attendant took us to the quick line and the gentleman behind the counter after a bit of searching found Margies reservation and gave us all our tags and Margies boarding passes. An easy time through security and a nice lite breakfast of a cheese omelet, potatoes and toast split between the two of us was the perfect way to start our trip. 

Our flight went without a hitch and we were in Toronto before we knew it. We had to go through another security check and US customs before our flight to New York. That involved using one of the new customs stations that takes your photo and gives you a receipt with your picture on it to hand back into customs . My picture wasn’t to bad but Margie looked like a convict. Next time mine will probably look like a convict too. The whole process went pretty well and then we were waiting for our flight to New York. We grabbed another bite to eat, a burger and fries and then found a seat at our gate and waited. Our flight was delayed for about an hour due to waiting for connecting flights and some bad weather somewhere in the world.

We got to Laguardia and, after retrieving our luggage, we found our way to the taxi pickup station. There was a long cue like there had been when we were in Venice waiting for a water taxi. The line, thankfully, moved fairly quickly and soon we were happily seated in our first New York Taxi.  

We tried to take photos out the window of the cab but they did not turn out well. We had looked online for some of the possible routes our cab could take to get to our hotel, the Hotel Newton on Broadway, and we were rewarded in that we kind of recognized some of the route ourselves, like the large bridge over to Manhattan. Most of it, of course, we did not. At one point there was this little crazy lady in the middle of the street calling out to people. The cab driver just slowed down and kept going. I decided then that rolling down my window  to take a photo might not be a good idea. I think that was in Harlem. The Hotel was on the upper West side about 3 blocks from Central Park, what we thought would be an ideal location. 

We signed in and proceeded up to our room, 614. The building is older with a smallish elevator  and narrower hallways. The hallway approaching our room had a washroom at the end of the hall just outside our room. Margie and I looked at each other in alarm hoping that was not our washroom. We entered the smallest hotel room I have ever seen but were gratified to see it did have its own washroom. Small blessings. 

The Double bed was very soft and small for two people who did not usually share a bed, But the room was clean and the tv worked. There were plenty of towels and shampoo. The staff were very friendly and helpful. After depositing our things in the room we decided to just walk around the neighbourhood to see if we could find a restaurant for dinner. 

We walked up the street about 5 blocks on one side and then back down on the other passing the 95 St metro station, several small cafes and bakeries a grocery market store then back to the hotel. We did stop along the way at the market store where we picked up some juice and fruit for the morning. 

We decided to go to the restaurant right next door to the hotel , the Manhattan Diner. I had the eggplant rototilli which was very good and Margie had the spinach pie and we each had a beer and were very full by the time we ate only half. We took the other half back to the hotel as we had a small fridge to keep our food in. And by that time it was late for us as we had been up so early, so we went to sleep on the double bed with great expectations for the next day