The 4 New York lovers back in New York, this time for 10 days and in summer!
The youngsters are now 23 and 15 years old.
5th trip for me, 4th for the eldest and 2nd for my spouse and my youngest.
Not the best season to go to New York, but the only possible window to leave at 4.
Absorbed by multiple (pre)occupations the months preceding the departure, I could not make a schedule as precise as I would have liked. It was even very complicated to imagine myself on this journey…
So much the worse, or so much the better? The departure date is here, let’s go!
I had booked the flights well in advance, seeing the prices soar higher than the planes themselves, and after comparison, I chose to leave from Brussels with Brussels Airlines (we are neighbors and friends of the Belgians)
A direct flight with convenient times: departure 10:35 a.m., arrival 1 p.m. at JFK, return 6:30 p.m. arrival on D+1 at 7:40 a.m.
And a price well below that offered by Air France departing from Roissy: €600 per person, direct, modifiable, with baggage in the hold (when I booked, Air France was over €900 per AR, even €1,200!).
Jour 1
The flight went perfectly, arriving on time at JFK Terminal 1.
45 minutes of patience with the border police and here we are admitted to American soil!
Thanks to reading the forum, I knew that due to works we had to take a shuttle bus to join the Air train at terminal 8.
Brussels Airlines had also warned us.
We are guided in a very clear and fluid way to the shuttle, which must make a fairly large loop to reach terminal 8 (think of this extra time, about fifteen extra minutes, to reach JFK on the way back).
At the exit of the Air train, good surprise, this one is free at the moment (it will always be the case the day of our return). We are asked to go to the metro station to buy our Metrocard.
We buy our 4 Metrocards with two different credit cards, entering the postal code 99999 as non-US residents (a little trick to remember to be able to finalize the purchase without blocking the queue behind you).
And let’s go for the metro, I admit that I was a little worried given all my misses during previous trips!
But this time, not a mistake in 10 days and especially not to get to the hotel with flight fatigue
The journey is simple because direct: we get off at Lexington Avenue / 53rd St line E.
Exiting the metro is punctuated by “wow”, we burst into the middle of the tall towers of East Midtown!
4 or 5 minutes walk to get to the hotel.
I had had time to study the hotel offer at length because we had planned to leave in April 2023, which was not possible.
So I was ready to jump on what I had spotted: the 1-bedroom penthouse of the Best Western Plus Hospitality House, located on E 49th ST between Lexington and 3rd Avenue.
Huge surprise for young people: the large private terrace with deck chairs and a garden table under a New York cistern! And a striking low angle because a super modern skyscraper of 240m looks down on us… we also see a nice older one with gargoyles (the Lexington hotel I believe)
So we have an aparthotel with a kitchen, a shower room with wc, a separate bedroom, a sofa bed and an extra bed in the living room for each of my youngsters who are both very tall. And this terrace!
Well if you are looking for calm, this is not the best address, in the heart of Midtown, on a roof and between the buildings (and their air conditioning). But some of us are heavy sleepers and some have a fondness for earplugs.
The welcome at the reception is very friendly.
Breakfast is included, there is a breakfast room which is small but we never had to wait. You could nevertheless take trays for lunch at the apartment, on the terrace for example.
The buffet is complete: hot savory (potatoes, scrambled eggs, bacon, vegetables, etc.) hot sweet (pancake and waffle machines!) and cold (nice choice of bagels, donuts, muffins, breads, pastries) dairy products and cereals, and a nice selection of hot and cold drinks.
The hotel service is responsive and professional, some members of the team speak French.
Access to the cold water and hot drinks dispenser 24 hours a day.
The hotel is a two minute walk from the Lexington / 51st St line 6 station and 5 minutes from the E and M lines.
We settle down and then we go for a walk in the neighborhood, starting with Greenacre Park. Oasis of calm and greenery, very pretty. We also appreciate the walk in the streets of the area, beautiful houses, nice storefronts, the murals of Kobra (Einstein on his bike and the exhausted firefighter of September 11) we greet the Chrysler which looks at us on Lexington, we are going to eat a Piece at Urbanspace which is next door to the hotel on Lexington. Korean to start this stay. A few extra groceries at the Morton Williams Convenience Store on 2nd Avenue – an attraction in itself for American staples – on 2nd Avenue, then we head back in for a welcome sleep.
Good job J1!
2023-08-13 19:58:11
#Story #York #family #August
