Goodbye to New York

Friday was our departure day with a supposedly relatively straight forward 2½ hour drive up to Springfield in Massachusetts. We were up at 7am and went via the gym to the Gemini Diner for breakfast. This was conveniently located half way between the hotel and the Dollar rental place on 22nd Street. Helen went back to the hotel with Tom & Harry to lug all the luggage down to reception whilst Joe & I picked up the car. As we walked down 2nd Avenue a vagrant (clearly off his head on something) had himself properly exposed – Joe & clocked him at the same time. Joe gasped and I was pretty annoyed. We carried on walking and I spotted a traffic cop and he went off to investigate & imprison him.

The staff at Dollar just couldn’t give a monkeys about customers. My car, booked months ago, was in a different depot so it was up to me to drive across Manhattan to pick it up. I felt like I should say sorry. Plus they surprised me with an extra $180 insurance which I’m sure wasn’t mandatory. Thinking that the driving we were planning only moderate I declined the extra fees for Helen to be a named driver. So Joe & I made our way all the way to the seafront (near Battery Park) and swapped it for our SUV with a lady who was marginally more friendly. The tank of course wasn’t full, of course I forgot to check and of course later when I checked the paperwork it was logged as full on pickup – great.

We exited New York via the FDR Expressway, made some wrong turns (Helen was in charge of nav) and paid $7.50 toll a couple of times for the same bridge because why not. Traffic out of New York state was rubbish and it took us most of the day (from 11am to about 5pm) to get the 135 miles to Springfield. En route we stopped off in Fairfield CT for a pizza, finding it by chance, having exited the freeway and stumbling into a nice middle class town.

The Marriott we had booked was via my rewards points saving us about $500 but I had it my mind, and told the family, that we were in two rooms. So it was a bit of a squash in a twin double with roll away but frankly still pretty comfortable for $0. Joe drew the short straw sleeping with me and Tom took the roll away. We watched the Redsox game (lost 6-9 to Kansas City) in Champions, the ‘best sports bar in downtown Springfield’ (sounds good doesn’t it but it’s Springfield) while we ate burgers and buffalo wings and felt very American. Actually the bar was pretty good, 20 big plasmas and a mammoth 70″ at the front with armchairs.