So the kids and I went to New York last weekend for my stepson’s wedding. 

We had a 6AM flight.  The kids’ bright idea was to stay up all night so they wouldn’t fall asleep.  A bad idea, under normal circumstances – and it would come back to haunt us – but for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that I only got two hours of sleep myself that night, it worked out well.  They blasted me out of bed for a change (turnabout is not fair play) at 3AM, we finished our packing, and jumped in a 4AM taxi to the airport.

We got there quickly, got our tickets, checked our bags and zipped through security, all in under twenty minutes.  I sat back when we got to the gate, less than an hour after leaving home, and figured “if this is the way the rest of the trip goes, bring it on!”

It was not, and it was brought on.

We landed in plenty of time to catch our connecting flight at O’Hare, as morning took hold – and arrived at our gate just in time to see the 8AM flight to LaGuardia was cancelled. 

The kids promptly fell asleep on seats in the terminal – the night before caught up with them.  Which, I figured, was fine – having never been on standby before.  Then I realized – I have to go where the flights are.  So I spent the next two hours running around O’Hare to the various gates, watching us crawl slowly up the Standby list.

Finally, we got on a 10AM flight – the last three open seats on the plane – which didn’t take off until 11.  We were going to have to haul donkey to get to the 4:30PM wedding rehearsal.   

But we were rewarded with a flight right up the center of Manhattan for the first time in all my trips to the city, before we landed at LaGuardia.    And then took a bus to the middle of Queens, where we got on the “7” train to Midtown.  The “7” is an El in Queens, before diving under the East River to join the NYC subway system.  I’d ridden it several times in the past – but it was the kids’ first big introduction to New York in all its character, sprawl and glorious filth. Then to the “6” train at Grand Central, taking us to our hotel on 28th Street…

…where the kids, crabby and sleep-deprived and cranky from having to stand on the subway, promptly started to fall asleep.  It was not to be.  I rousted them up and got them back on the train.  Our destination this time was 103rd Street, and the Conservatory Gardens, a lovely gem of a place that seems to host more weddings than Elvis’ chapel in Vegas. 

And it was lovely:

We walked through the rehearsal – and then cabbed down to the Groom’s Dinner, at the Hard Rock in Times Square.

Fun?  Yes.  Sleepy kids?  Well, Bun held out OK, but Zam ended up nodding off with his head on the table.  It was time to go, before too terribly long – like, 9:00ish PM. 

And the kids stepped out, and saw this…:

 

…and suddenly weren’t tired any more.  We had to take a run up Broadway and a dip into the huge, Wonka-like Toys R Us…

…and thence, by cab, back to the hotel.  The kids noticed a McDonalds on the corner, and wanted to run down before taking a walk around the neighborhood.  I told ’em “go ahead, I just wanna lay down for a minute…”

Well, of course, the next thing I remember it was 8AM.  The big day, in fact.

More on that tomorrow.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 6:28 am and is filed under mitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.