Tuesday - 24/09/13

The final day... I was chatting to the guy on the hotel reception desk - I'd heard he was a runner. I took his advice and ran East down E20th Street to the East River and ran up that side of Manhattan. I cut in at around 41st and had a loo stop at Bryant Park. I completed my cross town run along W42nd Street and then headed South alongside the West river. There was a nice river side park there. In that park they were filming an episode of Law and Order - Special Victims Unit. I cut back into Manhattan at around W10th Street. The street layout in the west village is not as straightforward as the grid pattern in midtown, it takes a little while to get orientated. I had been running for an hour so I decided to have a beer and lunch in the White Swan. There were pictures of Dylan Thomas on the walls so I took some photos. The food was probably OK but I thought I might as well move on and go to the Corner Bistro and have a Bistro burger. I then ran back across town to Union Square and called in the Heartland Brewery pub and had a glass of IPA. I drew some cash... Remember to put the card in and then pull it out straight away! I jogged and walked around Gramercy and then went back to the hotel to collect my bags. On the way to the L metro at 3rd Avenue I noticed that Swindon v Chelsea was on the TV so I watched some of that and had a chat to Ben the barman.

I then got the L to 8th Ave and a slow train on the A, C, E and changed for the express somewhere around Canal Street. It takes a good 90 minutes to get to Howard Beach and transfer to the JFK air train. On this journey I was more relaxed about being the only white face on the train. I am more aware of what a multi-racial society there is in New York. I took a short stroll from the air train to T2 where I dropped my bag off and got a printed boarding pass even though I didn't ask for one. We went through security at T2 and then had a transfer bus ride to T4. There was a shake shack at T4 so I had a smoke shack burger with fries and a vanilla milk shake. We started boarding on time at 8:20 for a scheduled 9:15 departure. We boarded the plane and then there was a one hour delay because Air Force One was in the vicinity and had priority over everything. So we took off an hour late and arrived at Heathrow T4 about 30 minutes late. I would say that it took me about 30 minutes to clear passport control. I must remember that at the automatic passport reading machine you put the shiny page forward and upwards with passport open at the photo page.

My bus wasn't until 11:50 so I had an hour to kill. That was easy enough, I went into the loos to swap American cash and notes over with British cash and notes and then had a Costa Coffee  Got the bus which left T4 then went to Heathrow Central before hitting the M4 back to Newport. It's a three hour coach ride to Newport in total.

When I got home I was quite tired and so went straight to bed a slept for a couple of hours. The following morning I went to Penylan home for dogs and collected Maisie - she had to have some vet treatment while I was away but she was fairly perky when she saw me.