Paul:
Today is Cunard's 70th anniversary of the first Queen Mary's maiden voyage into New York.
I am woken by green flickering lights in the room and once I discount it's a hangover leap out to discover the New York sky line straight ahead in the 04.45 twilight. I think we missed the bridge bit. On deck within minutes Amanda and I are amazed how warm it is and photograph furiously at the approaching Manhattan drama. Coastguard ships, tugs and a NYPD helicopter greet us. Amanda is quite choked up about the imposing skyscraper vista ahead of us; she's dreamt of this moment since she was a little girl and now it is happening.
After a huge breakfast we have a comparatively easy disembarkation to shore, through baggage collect and through immigration and customs. The next phase is exhausting........
At JFK we travel from T5 to T4 by air train to drop off our suitcases with a pleasant black guy speaking Spanish to a tourist. Switching to English effortlessly he charges $23. We then take a gruelling journey into Penn station near 7th Avenue. Nothing is straight forward for tourists. We take the free air train to Jamaica station where 'free' is not recognised and it costs $5.00. It costs another $17.00 each to Penn. The confusion of different tickets for different train companies and the fact our plastic cards are not recognised adds to my exhaustion. The journey through New York suburbs is quick.
New York city is hot: 33 degrees C. I am here for a few hours because Amanda fancies a restaurant she read about and I learnt there is a full size Star Wars spaceship fighter made of lego sited in Times Square. But it isn't there and we don't visit the restaurant. Instead I take pictures of men and women dressed as Toy Story characters and eat at the biggest MacDonalds in the World. It is quite surreal being here just 3 hours. We embark on our complicated journey back to JFK T5 shelling out again for the 'free' air train at Jamaica station and collecting our baggage en route. There are a few stroppy people at T5 but New York seems to be like that.
I now sit in JFK with a sleepy Amanda by gate 15 awaiting our 17.32 flight to San Francisco.
I enjoyed the fact that the QM2 offered people no opportunities to use their mobile phones to blah down endlessly on unlimited calls per minute. Internet access was severely restricted also and people resorted to books to read. At gate 15 there is a cacophony, a wall of sound that Phil Spectre would be proud of: tannoy announcement compete with blue grass and country rock from cafes and shops. Hoards of Spanish/Cuban families await boarding to Orlando and gabble away at thousands of watts volume. Mobile phones inspire folk to shout in strange languages about their forthcoming plans. I wish I was still on the Atlantic ocean. Ahead is a 6 hour flight with no food on jJtBlue. California is 3 hours behind Eastern time.
The plane journey seems longer than it is. It takes off an hour later at 18.30 and I have been in the same clothes since 04.45 and my calf muscles ache to be stretched out but there is no room. The 6 hour flight crawls by. I alternate my boredom between watching baseball on TV, which I don't understand and staring down at the huge fields, hills, lakes and mountains below. I regular see very large precise circles miles across but don't know what they are. I think perhaps I am becoming delirious. Amanda watches a film and sleeps. A woman behind me sniffs in a long drawn out rasp behind me every 30 seconds.
The San Fransisco [SF] baggage system is efficient and so is the taxi ride. At hotel Chancellor we are too late for a hotel dinner despite going back back 3 hours in time. Getting dressed again we leave the hotel and soon Amanda and I are sitting in bubblegum booth next to a gleaming blue and cream Ford Edsell eating a burger and fries. Amanda is drinking an orange fizzy chemical in a glass and I have two bottles of Sierra Nevada beer and one glass, which initially confuses the waiter. Bed at 00.20 and sleep at 00.21.
Amanda:
I managed to confuse my phone alarm clock - like me, it's a bit hazy as to exactly what day it is and seems to have blithely lost 2 days. It means we miss scraping under a bridge but we're on deck to see the deep purple sky turn to rose and then to blue behind the Manhattan skyline. I don't think Paul and I have ever really 'got' New York, our later trip in makes me realise that essentially I like New York as a backdrop but the smelly, baking streets and ferociously jostling tourists made me want to leave as soon as possible. We spent an absurd amount of time and money just getting to Time Square - only to eat in a (strangely clean) McDonalds. Still, that seems to be the extent of our gourmet adventures for today as we wait to board an 8 hour flight which provides no food. I am not a fan of feeding people on short flights but I do not count 8 hours as short. Possibly Americans do but I will watch with interest how they cope with 8 hours with only teeny-tiny cans of Coke to sustain them.
Of course, they took picnics. The girl next to me calmly produces sandwiches from her pocket and then proceeds to munch multiple packs of crisps. The flight is grim and I try not to think about the longer one ahead. Arriving at our hotel tired and hungry we decide to order room service - no, room service ended at 9.30pm! Grimly, we re-dress and are then directed to an amazing 50s style diner with a whole car in it and booths. I have a bizarre drink which seems to be a kind of blended ice cream float but with sorbet - appallingly bad for me but a delicious one off. The e numbers and sugar do not keep me awake.
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