Unfortunately we were sad that this morning it was time to say goodbye to New York. Its hard to believe having spent a week here that there was still so much more to see and do. We were catching a pre-arranged shuttle to JFK airport but were not 100% confident that it would show up at the correct time. The Winklers had had significant problems with the same shuttle company when they arrived at JFK and David had some issues when trying to confirm the booking yesterday.
When we could drag ourselves out of bed we went downstairs for breakfast. David was really keen to go back to Astros. We walked own there but the line was out the door - back to the hotel, where the line was also long but seemed to move relatively fast. Connor and Ryan were both keen to try the ice cream sodas. While not a breakfast drink, we thought what the heck given it was our last morning. With breakfast out of the way we went back up to the room and packed all of our bags. This included the new extra bag we had to buy yesterday to fit in all of the boys holiday shopping!!!
Once we had everything done we set out for one final walk through Central Park. It was fantastic weather and a lot of locals were out and about including those participating in a half marathon. We went for a short walk and the boys enjoyed climbing on some rocks in the park before we bid farewell to the final squirrel and made our way back to the hotel. It was sad to go but we were really glad we made the effort to visit the park one last time.
When we got back to the hotel the shuttle was waiting outside, a good half an hour early. David commented that it had been sitting there when we first went out to Central Park. We went up to the room and grabbed our bags and checked out. David went to speak to the shuttle driver to see if he was waiting for us - he was, but said we needed to give him some more time. We sat in the lobby and waited. After a short time we loaded our luggage and ourselves into the van. We then strapped ourselves in which was a blessing as the driver was a maniac. We stopped again - double parked - outside a hotel on Lexington Avenue. Two passengers boarded but then the driver disappeared for a long, long time. He eventually returned with no new passengers. On to Grand Central Station where we picked up 2 more passengers before finally making our way to JFK. We were certainly glad we had insisted on taking an early shuttle.
We were dropped off at our terminal and then checked in at the Virgin America counter. This was relatively straight forward. Once we had paid for our baggage to be checked in we dropped it off at baggage security and then joined the very, very long line so we too could go through security. Although the line was rather large thankfully it moved relatively quickly.
Down on the concourse there was time for a baguette lunch and some snack shopping before going to our gate. It never ceases to amaze us what people think counts as hand luggage/carry on baggage. Some of their bags are the size of our main luggage (and they then also have at least one other smaller bag) and then they get cross when they can't fit it in an overhead bin.
The flight itself was pretty uneventful. After 6 hours we arrived at LAX. We collected our bags and then tried to work out how and where to catch our complimentary hotel shuttle. By this point in time everyone was pretty over it. It may have only been 9 pm in Los Angeles but our body clocks said it was about midnight and we hadn't eaten in hours either. After waiting for a while hoping that we were in the right location we were very pleased to see a Sheraton Hotel shuttle bus pull-up. Thankfully it was only a 15 minute ride to the hotel. We checked in as quickly as possible and then went up to our room. We decided to forget about eating. It was clothes off and straight into bed as we had to be up at 5 am for a 5.15-5.30 am shuttle back to the airport. A long, long day!!!!
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