To see photos of the major New York City attractions CLICK HERE to read the report from our prior trip to New York City.
Click on each photo below for a larger image.
The purpose of this trip to New York was to attend a Jewish unveiling ceremony of the tombstone for my Mother-In-Law, Shirley Cepinko, who passed away about a year ago at the age of 96. The timing of the unveiling of the tombstone varies among Jewish communities around the world but is common in America to be done about a year after a person passes away. (See: Jewish Cemetery, Burial and Mourning Customs (JCAM)). As long as we were making this 6,000 mile round-trip journey from the west coast to New York, we figured we'd spend a few days visiting New York City.
I had originally made flight reservations originating from the west coast at 11:40 AM Pacific Time and arriving into Newark Airport in New Jersey at 11:00 PM Eastern Time with a change of planes in Denver, Colorado. We'd have a 2 hour and 20 minute layover in Denver which would provide some safety margin in case our first flight was late, and also give us some time to have dinner at a restaurant in the Denver airport. I belong to a credit card membership program that covers the cost of meals at a restaurant in the Denver airport for up to $28 per person for up to 3 people. Since there were 3 of us traveling on this trip that would be a $74 benefit for us! If we shared a bottle of wine, it would not be difficult to rack up a bill for $74 or more for dinner.
However, Southwest Airlines sent me a change to our flight reservation a few weeks ago. They said it was necessary in order for us to make our connecting flight. They moved our departing flight to 9:25 AM, more than 2 hours earlier than our original flight, but we'd only get into Newark 15 minutes earlier at 10:25 PM. I should have looked closer at the change they made as now we'd be making a stop in Denver without changing planes and then having a 2 hour and 20 minute layover in Nashville, Tennessee, before changing planes. Unfortunately the Nashville airport does not have a lounge that I have access to in the Southwest Airlines terminal nor a restaurant that participates in my credit card membership meals voucher program.
In trying to make lemonade out of lemons we did find a restaurant in the Southwest Airlines terminal with live music and decided to have dinner there.
The musician performing live while we were there was Payton Taylor, a country music singer who appeared in Seasons 16 and 17 of American Idol. She was quite good and we enjoyed her music.
Since my wife and I own a vineyard in Missouri, we are always interested in trying other wines from the Midwest. We ordered the 2016 Arrington Red Fox Red shown in the photo above from local vineyards in Tennessee. It was actually quite good. We are always encourage when we find good wines from grapes grown in the Midwest as we have not yet started to bottle wines from our own Midwest vineyards. We only started planting about 5 years ago and the vines are just starting to be mature enough to produce enough grapes for aging and bottling.
Once we arrived at the Newark Airport we took a taxi to our hotel. We usually take Uber but it had been a long day of flying and we did not want to have to find the Uber pickup location and then wait for it to arrive. I had made our hotel reservation a number of weeks ago. Unable to find an affordable hotel in Manhattan I had made a reservation at the Howard Johnsons by Wyndham Long Island City. The rates and reviews were reasonable and a NYC F train subway station was just 3 blocks away. That station was just one stop from Manhattan which proved to be very convenient and fast for getting into the heart of Manhattan.
Unfortunately, though, this hotel is about 30 miles from Newark and the taxi fare came to $154. Laguardia is a much closer airport to the hotel but there were no reasonably priced Southwest Airlines flights for the date and time that we wanted to fly. The savings on the airfare more than offset the cost of the longer taxi ride.
When we arrived at the hotel it was almost midnight local time but only around 9 PM Pacific Time. With our bodies still adjusted to Pacific Time and having gotten some sleep on the plane, we weren't quite ready for bed yet but were a bit hungry. The Court Square Diner in Long Island City was not too far away and was open all night so we took an Uber there. Later we discovered that there is an all night take-out grill right around the corner from our hotel. After taking Uber back to our hotel we were finally ready for some sleep.
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