After battling birds flying into jet engines, circling approaches, and a variety of failures in a flight simulator, I quickly made haste for the Denver airport in hopes of catching a flight to New York. You see, after all this testing, I had an Italian language test in New York the following day. It is a test only offered a couple times a year, but the unfortunate timing with my simulator testing meant my only option was to take a redeye to New York and take the test a few hours later feeling groggy.
I have often been delayed flying out of Denver, due to its summer storms, so I thought that may actually work to my advantage. I missed a Newark flight by minutes despite running to the gate. And as other United flights were delayed 2-3 hours before being ultimately canceled, I had run over to Delta and hopped on a flight to LaGuardia. We arrived around 1:15AM. Not really ideal, but still better than taking a redeye that would arrive at 5am. By the time I took a taxi to the hotel, it was approaching 2am. I attempted to check in to the Tapestry Collection by Hilton near Times Square, but they had thrown away my confirmed reservation. This happened to the gentleman in line behind me as well. This is the first time something like this has happened to me, and made a little bit worse when it’s 2am in the middle of New York City. Because the date had rolled over, it was virtually impossible to book anything online anymore. I was literally walking into any hotel I saw and inquiring if they had rooms. Nicole was calling places at random until I finally got a room at the Yotel. I was able to muster maybe 4+ hours of sleep before rolling out of bed and walking toward Central Park to take my test at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York. I won’t know the result of that test for another 45 days, but I don’t think the hotel cancellation did me any favors.
Nicole battled traffic, tunnels, and the worst drivers in New York AND New Jersey to pick me up in the middle of the city and transport me back to the relatively safe confines of Northern New Jersey. There was some talk of taking a flight up to Maine to relax for a few days after all that had happened. Alas, a global IT meltdown had other ideas and airlines couldn’t seem to cope with such things. It seemed a bad time to go to an airport. So to create a semblance of a vacation, we headed west toward Pennsylvania to visit a quainter version of New Jersey . . .an Old New Jersey if you will.
There were old covered bridges. Why they are covered seems nonsensical. After all, the rest of the road isn’t covered. Some say it helps the structure. Others say it calmed livestock who were crossing…because nothing calms one down more than the feeling of being enclosed. Anyway, it looked somewhat picturesque. After that we hopped back in the car and went to Clinton, New Jersey.
This view above with the old mill is apparently well known, but it didn’t look particularly familiar to me. We were initially parked by the old mill, but a gentleman came out to yell at us and said we had to pay $12 per person for the museum inside the mill. We will not be bullied into going into overpriced museums with ambiguous contents! We immediately found parking across the river. The town of Clinton itself seems to pride itself on its plastic cups of pickles that people were walking around with. Other than that, there were a few clothing shops, a sandwich place, an ice cream joint, and we were basically out of town. In another hour, we were back in Caldwell, New Jersey.
passports & pepto bismol 