Everything about the flight to New York was surprisingly hassle free. It took minutes to get our boarding passes (and I am not sure it was that imperative for us to have done our visa waiver on line as no one seemed to check we had and we had to do a hand written one on the plane anyway), we were through security equally quickly and even had our bags sniffed by a cute little dog (though maybe he was trained to kill if he smelled explosives or drugs) and by the time we'd looked round the shops it was already time to board.
We were going with Virgin Atlantic, a vast improvement on the awful Monarch Airlines that had taken us to Grenada. The inflight entertainment was excellent with each seat getting its own dedicated screen and we had the ability to select one of about 20 new films which we could pause, rewind and fast forward through. I was rather annoyed that the flight was only seven hours long because I wanted to watch loads more stuff and sadly I missed the last five minutes of "The Hangover" which I had enjoyed more than I expected. I had though really enjoyed "Star Trek" and thought Simon Pegg stole the show and was only slightly annoyed that it basically involved an alternate version of events due to some Romulans travelling back in time and wrecking everything. So we didn't get to see how the crew of the original Enterprise really got together. But it was still lots of fun. I can only imagine how excited inside Simon Pegg must have been feeling, not only to be in the Star Trek crew, but to be acting alongside Leonard Nimoy. I suspect Pegg remained cool. I would have been shouting, "You're Spock!" all the way through filming, including all the actual scenes. I would probably have been sacked. Plus my Scotch accent isn't quite up to it, as you'll know if you've listened to the podcast.
I had my first alcoholic drink since Edinburgh finished as we sat waiting for the plane to take off. I had done essentially an Edinburgh Fringe length of time without booze to make up for the actual Edinburgh Fringe of booze that I took part in. It was nice to fall off the wagon with a glass of champagne. That marked the beginning of the holiday for me.
I was anticipating a long wait to get through American passport control, but in fact this was very rapid too. And much more civil than I remember it being from previous visits. Excitingly or worryingly depending on your point of view we were made to give our fingerprints on a special machine as we came through. I quite liked doing it because I felt like I was James Bond and I am not planning on doing any crimes or terrorist atrocities, so can't see any problem with it. But maybe my finger prints will be used against me in the future, if any McCarthy style regime takes over the world.
The trip from the airport to the hotel was the only aggravating part of the trip as we had to wait for some other passengers who were sharing our minibus and then crawl through rush hour traffic. The streets of New York were especially snarled up because of all the stuff that's going on in the UN this week.
Finally though we made it to the hotel. It's rather a swanky one and we're on the 32nd floor with a jaw dropping view down to the street below. Luckily the windows don't open so I don't have to fight my compunction to jump out. It's got free wi-fi too (well I say free, but I suppose they might have charged me already) so I am going to stay in the room the whole time on the internet, just as if I was at home, except looking up the sights of New York on line so I can pretend I went out.
We were flagging by 9pm New York time, though it was 2am in the UK (or 3am I haven't quite worked out the difference) and after a quick dinner and a couple of beers I was asleep pretty much as soon as my head hit the pillow and dreaming of being in Star Trek. If only they had cast me. It would have been great to have the film exactly as it was except with a terrible actor with an awful Scotch accent ruining it. Much like the TV series.
Oh that's not fair.
