I WAS ON A PLANE TODAY!

Yes, that’s right, for the first time in almost 18 months, I flew on an actual plane to take a real trip. Can you believe it?! It was a little surreal going through those familiar travel steps today, but that muscle memory was definitely there and begging to be let out. I’m so excited!

What’s that you say? “Oh, but we haven’t seen a new blog post from you in over a year!” Well yes, that’s true and to that I can only say….sorry! I was thinking that, with a pandemic raging and no actual travel happening for me, I would be quick to jump back onto my Travel Throwback posts, but I just didn’t get around to it. But rest assured that I do still have some more of those posts in me and I’m hopeful that taking another trip (and blogging about it for a few days) will get me back on track. 🙂

Speaking of being back on track, I’m back in New York! I haven’t been here since the last Christmas trip Scott and I took here in 2018. As you may remember, this is Scott’s favorite city, so when things started looking better with COVID-19 earlier this year, we decided to book a trip. Of course, the Delta variant has added new complexities to the pandemic, not to mention Hurricane Ida dumping record amounts of rainfall on NYC just two days ago, so I didn’t even post a preview here because I wasn’t even certain we’d be able to come! But we’re here now and we’re going to make the most of our extended Labor Day weekend.

First thing’s first – the travel process. We were both wondering what it would be like to travel in our new, mask-filled world, but we were ready to give it a try. We’ve been vaccinated for months, so we packed up our stuff, grabbed our masks, and Lyft’ed our way to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, had a light lunch at the airport, and boarded with no issues, all with our masks (well, not the eating – that would be silly).

We flew on our favorite airline, Delta, and also opted for first class seats, which made for a comfortable return to the friendly skies. We even departed on time! The flight was smooth and we were happy to find that Delta has started offering more services (food and drinks) onboard again. There was still no pre-flight drink (just a sanitizing wipe, which was certainly practical), but the flight attendants did a great job of taking care of us. From reading recent flight reviews, I didn’t think we’d be given a meal in first class, but we got a decent sandwich, chips, and a cookie, along with pretty standard drink service (though they no longer offer my beloved Coke Zero – waaaahhhh!). Between the food, adult beverage, and a movie, the time flew by and, before I knew it, we were landing. Huzzah! Wearing a mask throughout the flight really wasn’t a problem for either of us, which is great as it will make future travel easier.

Our home-away-from-home on this trip is the Renaissance New York Chelsea, which is not only new to both of us, but it’s a relatively new hotel in general (it just opened in February 2020). We caught a Lyft here from LaGuardia and arrived within about 35 minutes. There was a stretch of highway where we saw several abandoned cars on the road, which we assume were the result of the torrential rains two days ago. It made us very happy we weren’t here for that!

Our check-in at the hotel was quick and efficient, which is always appreciated. We had no plans tonight, so we just got settled in the room, took a brief walk around the neighborhood, and have been relaxing in the room since. But don’t think that doesn’t mean I don’t have some photos for you!

And that’s it for our first day back in NYC! Well, more of a first evening, really. 🙂 Things are definitely not all fully open here yet, so we can’t see a Broadway show, but we’ve still got some fun stuff planned. Check back over the next few days to see what we get up to!