Irene was unable to stop us. The only impediment between Melbourne and New York was having to wait hours in impossibly long queues, particularly for immigration in LA. We were glad to collapse in our hotel at JFK (after a bit of a run around, finding its shuttle service), hungry after no food on the 5 hour LA-NY flight. The hotel didn't have a restaurant and phone booked food delivery would be too long a wait. Why not a dinner of vending machine chips and nuts? Sorry, but the machine spat out our dollar bills. We went to bed hungry and fell on the generous hotel breakfast like wild beasts.
Next adventure back at the airport - after 90 minutes in another endless queue, we found that our flight to Syracuse had been cancelled and the next one was at 11.00pm. We were able to contact Joe and Liz in Cortland, who were JUST leaving the house to go and meet us (next time we will travel with a mobile phone, by the way!) Next, what to do? Answer: have an afternoon in Manhattan. After another hour, queuing to leave our luggage at the JFK baggage storage, we were told that they had run out of space (really!!!) SO .... were took all our stuff with us to Manhattan to store at Grand Central Station. Their storage facility was about 8 blocks away in a strange, suspicious-looking dive on W46the Street, run by a charming young woman, who made the mad experience a positive one. Anyhow, we headed off to see the Neue Gallery (recommended by a Melbourne friend) AND it was closed for renovations! SO we gave up completely and went to a lovely Italian restuarant for lunch then sat in Central Park in delightful weather, watching the joggers. We returned to JFK on the wildest bus ride in peak hour traffic you could possibly imagine, had dinner and eventually arrived in Syracuse near midnight, with the kind Joe and Liz waiting patiently for us,
Since then we have had a delightful time and will head off to Roxbury on Friday (where Irene has taken out the odd bridge and flooded the valleys), but we should get through. Our next report wil be on Tuesday, I should think.
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