Travel Diary

The final day would still be quite an adventure. It was a slow morning as people were gone and doing things, though it was great to sleep in and relax. Finally, we all headed to a restaurant for one final meal. I wanted to take a 360 shot, but my camera card was full, which was odd since it hardly had any photos on it. But I figured I could delete my earlier 360 video since I had uploaded it already. I formatted the card and had plenty of room and took the shot, yet also had lost the high res version of the 360 video and the 360 shot from the pizza night. In hindsight, I should have just went to the car and got the card from the drone since that footage was already uploaded and the card could be formatted. Oh well. Next time. Lesson is to format these cards on occasion. They get gummed up with old footage info even if the files don’t show up.

After lunch, we headed to the train station and said goodbye. Erica and Lia would be coming with me on the train (hurrah for more company!) since the person they had traveled up with had caught Covid and it wasn’t safe for them to travel with him anymore. He actually had to stay in his AirBNB the entire trip due to the illness. Really quite a bummer as he’s a fun dude to have around.

We were taking the 1:03 train to Grand Central Station. One confusing thing was the ticket said Track A, but the signs said it was Track B. Soon, there were announcements on the loud speaker. We could not understand the messages, but took it to explain that it was indeed Track A to get to NYC and not Track B, and then I vaguely remembered the same exact thing from the year before. Just odd how they apologize about it all as it’s really only six feet away to get to the other side. Still weirder is that it’s an issue a year later. Maybe it’s cheaper to keep the announcements going rather than fix the signs. New York red tape, am I right?

On the train, we traveled south. It would be a 90-minute ride, but the views were fun and the ladies got to see something new this time. For me, it was my third time on the train going up or down the Hudson; however, it’s still a great way to travel and see what upstate New York is like. Pity the windows are not cleaner as the old plastic windows do interfere with getting great photos. They need an open-air carriage.

In NYC, we exited at Grand Central and got some shots of the concourse. I will always take a photo of the iconic train station interior. The women were planning to spend a few more days in the city, but then got a message that one of the other women at the party had caught Covid as well. Since they were worried about getting trapped in the city, they decided to cancel their plans and just head home too. Once I knew they had things sorted out with their flights (I do love getting to share plane travel knowledge), I said goodbye and I headed to the subway.

The subway did have a detour and that made things tricky. I thought I had the correct train, but as I was boarding it, I asked someone if it went to Penn Station and he said nope. Oops. I quickly got off the train, and just as I did, my phone rang and it was Lia. She was going to Newark Airport too so she wanted to accompany me there. Cool! More the merrier. I headed back to the area where we all had said goodbye. It was great not to do all these train rides solo. I guess I got used to hanging out with people all weekend. It’s quite nice.

We then needed to take an Uber to Penn station since time was short and it would be too long to walk. Once there, we found the correct building (on the second try). And then located the train to EWR. Once aboard, it was an easy ride to the airport. Well, close to the airport. You have to change to the air train for the final few stops. Then we headed to security. I had TSA Precheck so I went through that lane. Lia took the other one, but neither lane had any sort of line. Hers did have a massive amount of line control ropes and her security check was quite long. Me, I sped through mine. I waited for her and we found a place for being able to sit and have some drinks. We got lucky because at EWR, the restaurants are limited and the seats even more so.

I had a nice tall beer, but time was short and 20 minutes later, I had to head to my gate. We said goodbye and I got on my plane and headed home. Luckily, another first class upgrade, so a comfy seat once more, though not a lie-flat seat like I took the year before. Just not worth the money and loss of potential miles. I mean the price of it was the same as two roundtrips to NYC in the off-season.

Five hours later, I was back in Seattle. Another great Memorial Day vacation in the books. I’ll miss hanging out with all those people. We do all have fun.