Wait, what?: New York Part I

I think that the best thing about being jet lagged is that the random times you need to get up don't actually hurt as much as they normally would. Thus, I was wide awake and wired when my trusty alarm went off - not because I had been asleep, but because I couldn't really get to sleep. American TV after 1am really dissolves, and they start their breakfast programmes at 4am (complete with traffic report! At 4am! Seriously!).

I checked out at 4.30am to BART (hee) to the airport. I wasn't the only person BARTing (again, hee. Anyone remember Bart from the Simpsons "Do the Bartman"? It's all I could think about the whole time!) at that ridiculous hour, my carriage had a couple of other airport-bound people and a random assortment of people who seemed to be both sober and stable.

I headed to the United check in (and go San Fran Airport for excellent signage!), and attempted to check myself in. There was an issue with signs for the lines, and apparently I didn't need to stand in this particular line, but whatever. The United check in's are all self check in, which is cool, except that the machine didn't read my passport. The rather scary check in lady (seriously, what is up with the amount of airspray/make up they wear?) 'helped' me and then made fun of my accent/country. Okay, so I was also silently mocking her, but at least I was silently doing it! I got my boarding pass, gave the check in lady a witheringly last look - followed by a quick smile as I realised that she was in control of the final destination of my bag.

I travelled through Heathrow-LA-Auckland just a couple of months just after the water bomb plot, so I had been through the 'take your shoes off ' phase of airport security - I just hadn't realised that it was still going on. I hadn't been asked to take my shoes off since that flight in all my flights between NZ and Aust, or even on my flight to San Fran. It was weird, and the staff are very brash. You can't even wear a jumper through on a domestic flight! I know that this is because those flights were domestics, but it was still quite a weird thing considering you can walk through NZ and Aust domestics without too much of a hassle. Somehow in the super xray, the top of my poster roll popped off and I wasn't allowed to go back to look for it, thus I ended up walking through the massive domestic airport with the tube on my arm, waving it like a robot. Oh yeah, I was all class and maturity!

Despite spending forever at San Fran airport, I don't have much memory of it, other than eating pancakes and wandering around. It was really weird that people were allowed to bring coffee onto the plane and when some tool spilt it down into the lap of the passenger below him, he seemed most surprised, and more than a little annoyed that the passenger was offended about it. I decided that the best use of my time was to sleep. I didn't have to worry about the flight attendants waking me up for food, for though it's a five hour flight - they don't feed you. At all. You can buy their overpriced food, but since everything had meat in it, I chose not to (America is not land of the vege-friendly). Oh, and while they offer a movie, it's forever away on a tiny screen and was something silly. Before I crashed out, we flew over some moutains, which oddly enough looked blue.

I must say, American domestic airlines are much more forward thinking by letting people use their own headphones instead of the potentially dodgy airplane ones. It was really trippy just before we landed because we were flying quite low over some suburbs and it all looked the same, only broken up by the occasional shop. Our suburbs aren't like that at all.

Even their farmland is different!

I was supposed to meet a friend at JFK Airport but the security people kind of shepherded us down to the baggage claim and we couldn't go back. This was less than useful for the meeting of people, given that I had planned to meet her at Starbucks. Le sigh. I stuck around for a little bit waiting to see if I could catch her coming in, but no dice. The wifi wouldn't connect for more than 10 secs on my phone, and I realised that I missed my laptop so much. Never again will I not take my precious baby with me. It would have saved me so much grief.

I decided that I would rather catch a shuttle than a train/subway/cab (expensive! stupid exchange rate!), so I dutifully lined up and was treated to some of that lovely New York attitude. Apparently known the name and the approximate location of your hotel is not enough information for shuttle people, despite being next to the World Trade Centre. Thankfully, being the huge geek that I am, I had saved a copy of my itinerary on my phone. I gave it to her, and she thanked me the New York way (rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath). Whatever. I waited the required half hour (in case I ran away?), then another before a middle aged man came running in and I was yelled at for not getting up quick enough. I was jammed in the back of the shuttle, squished between a middle aged lady who wouldn't stop talking on her cellphone and two Colombian tourists on their honeymoon. It was.....awkward.

The rest of the trip into town didn't exactly endear NYC to me. The roads that we took in were either motorways that were congested and had people honking their horns constantly, or were roads through what I presume were slums. The shuttle driver locked our doors. Oh joy. It took us over two hours to get into the city - and then we spent forever dropping everyone else but me and the German couple off. This is where the driver started going nuts when the German couple asked him how much further away they were to getting dropped off. Evidently, that is a question that is too much for the driver and he lost it - even having a go at me for wanting to be dropped off at my hotel which was preventing him from getting back to the airport. I just sat there, silently seething but wanting to punch him in the face. Hard. Stupid man. After getting lost a further two times, he dropped me off at my hotel - or rather, at the corner around from my hotel. Thankfully, there was a lovely doorman and aircon.

Checking in was a breeze, but I was so exhausted that I just passed out on the most glorious bed known to man. Seriously, after the hassle/uncomfortableness of the day, it was the best thing I have ever slept on. It was wondrous. I forced myself out to get something to eat, but by then it was dark, and I had seen a pizza place from my 19th floor hotel room. This pizza place was also where I discovered the wonders of Snapple. I love Snapple. It's a fruit drink that comes in flavours that aren't usual as a fruit drink - Pink Lemonade! And tea! And other awesome flavours. I didn't do much else, since it was dark and I had no idea where the subway's were, so I just chilled, took some pictures of the WTC and slept. Did I mention that the bed was wonderful?