I planned this Christmas trip to New York City back in August, when I was high off of two recent successful traveling adventures and naively confident that my days of having Covid ruin my plans were over.
I ought to know better, as I'm a Medievalist and every now and then I feel the urge to randomly tell people that the Black Death lasted upwards of five years. And if our trip had been planned to start just a day or two later I'd definitely have cancelled it myself, because the day we arrived in Grand Central Terminal was the day the news reports got big that apparently NYC was chock-full of Covid, and everywhere we went people were lined up for curbside Covid tests, and the thing that I most wanted to do in the city got cancelled because of Covid the literal day I planned to do it...
Ah, well. The kids, my partner, and I emerged safe and sound, and all have our negative Covid tests in hand to prove it.
And on the first day of our trip, we got to watch the sunrise from the sky!
We flew into Newark, primarily because in my limited experience I've found the TSA agents there to be ever so slightly less cruel than the TSA agents in JFK (Have I ever told you that I get "selectively screened" A LOT? Like, barring the time that a TSA agent put her hands into my literal underpants in front of everyone in the security line and I cried, it's more or less a family joke, and when my partner looked over at the Indy security checkpoint and saw a TSA agent swabbing the bottom of one of my socked feet he just rolled his eyes and got my bags off the belt for me, but nevertheless, it's the WORST and you bet I evaluate my airports based on the level of humiliation I've experienced there in the past).
I bought round-trip tickets for us on the Coach USA airport shuttle, which let us off near Grand Central Terminal at something like 10:00 am.
I actually bought an audio tour of Grand Central Terminal, thinking it would be a fun (for me!) way for us to kill a couple of hours, but honestly, it took us a couple of hours just to figure out how to buy the 7-Day Unlimited Metro Cards that I wanted (probably at least an hour of trying vending machine after vending machine, each time unable to figure out why it wanted to charge us hundreds of dollars for something that should be thirty-ish bucks each, only to finally read the words on the machine and notice that it sold TRAIN tickets, not SUBWAY tickets. And then the adventure trying to figure out where the subway ticket machines live!). As well, we definitely weren't used to how crowded Grand Central was (I mean!), so we mostly just gaped at the zodiac ceiling mural--
--fueled up at Doughnut Plant--
Found the Chrysler building! |
This is before we upgraded to my current favorite COVID masks. |
Fortunately, Bryant Park has lots to do outdoors in December!
Browsing Bryant's Park's Winter Market was suitably festive, as was walking north on 5th Avenue while admiring the buildings and the window displays.
The Rockefeller Tree, though, was... a little underwhelming?
We decided it's TV's fault. They make the tree look absolutely massive, so when you see it in person, yes, it's absolutely massive, but not, like, the most massive thing ever? And it's in front of the genuinely massive Rockefeller Center, so really it can't compete.
The skating rink is genuinely charming, though.
The Christmas Balls Fountain is way less crowded and way more photogenic, in my humble opinion.
We were all getting really exhausted/really excited to check into our AirBnB by this time, so we walked to the Times Square subway station, passing Radio City Music Hall on the way.
The kid is on the lookout for a rat, which she desperately wants to see. |
I'd kind of only meant us to stay long enough to unpack and buy some groceries, and I had a nebulous idea that we'd head out again, unburdened by our luggage, to do some more sightseeing, but a kid laid down on that couch and promptly fell asleep, so I figured we were more or less done for the day.
Might as well take a shower, order some takeout, and see what's on Netflix!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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