Introduction
Well the day was finally here...it was finally Christmas Eve! While most people were excited to spend some time at home and get ready to watch their kids open presents, or turn into kids as they opened their own presents, Kelsey and I were on our way to the airport for our flight up to JFK.
When we booked our trip back in October the availability was horrible and all we could settle for was a trip starting out in Milan and ending in London. The trip left DC on Christmas Eve and headed to New York, but we wouldn't leave until Christmas day to go to Milan, so that meant Christmas Eve and Christmas in New York City.
We left home at around 3:15 for our 5:30 flight and after a very short cab ride we were at DCA. We quickly checked in using the AAccess line and checked our bags, but since it was more than 12 hours between our connection at JFK we would have to pick them up and re-check them the next day all the way to Milan.
The great thing about traveling on a holiday, or the day before a holiday, is that there is almost no traffic at the airport. The security line was ridiculously fast and the only hold up was someone in front of us that forgot to remove their laptop and take off their belt (yeah, it was one of those days).
After getting through security we went directly to the elevators by the security check point (these are very hard to miss if you aren't looking) to sit in the US Airways Club for a bit since we didn't have access on AA for this leg of the trip since we were in economy. But the bad thing about traveling on a holiday is that the US Airways Club was closed for the day by the time we arrived at 4:00. So we headed down to the terminal and picked up some sandwiches to take on the plane and watched as people hurried to and from their gates to head home for the holiday.
Our flight boarded around 5:00 and that apparently flipped a switch in everyone's mind that they needed to crowd around the gate in a way that made it impossible for anyone to actually get to the gate when their zone was called. There was literally a line up to the gate, but no one who was in the line was actually in line to get on the plane...they had just formed a line so they could be first when their zone was eventually called. After quite literally pushing our way through the crowd to get on board when our zone was called we made it on to the CRJ that would take us up to JFK.
The boarding was slow, but everyone finally got settled and we pushed back just a few minutes late. The Captain indicated that our flying time would be 37 minutes, but because of a storm that had just gone through DC during the day and was heading up to New York we would only be flying at 17,000 ft.
We taxied to the south and were number three for take off. This is my favorite view on take off because you fly over the Pentagon and you can see the Washington Monument, National Mall and Capitol off the right side of the plane. But not as much today, the cloud ceiling was very low so we were quickly up in the clouds and we bounced our way through the clouds all the way to JFK.
We must have been mixing in the arrivals queue because we circled a few times and then made our final approach and landed on time after our 37 minute flight turned into an hour flight. I think AA put in a bit of a cushion to account for JFK arrival delays.
The plane parked at Terminal 8 in the regional jet gates so we walked all the way over to the baggage claim area and picked up our bags and followed the signs for the Air Train to get to the city.
Those of you that are from NYC might disagree with our choice at this point, but we wanted to get downtown as quickly as possible and we were staying at the Radisson Martinique which was right by Penn Station so we decided to take the Air Train to Jamacia Station and then to take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Penn Station direct. We could have taken the Subway all the way through Queens and into Manhattan, but I just wanted to get to the hotel and drop off our bag to go explore the city on Christmas Eve.
We took the train to Jamacia station and got in the large line to buy tickets to get out of the station and to also buy our LIRR tickets. The problem was the machines were not the easiest to use on first glance and the guy who was there to "help" was just accosting people because they couldn't figure out how to use the machines. We bought our tickets for the LIRR and headed to the exit gates, but we quickly realized when the gates wouldn't open that we didn't purchase a $5 Metro Card which you have to use to get in/out of the Air Train area. So we headed over to the Newsstand that was right by the exit and purchased two $5 Metro Cards and then proceeded to run to the LIRR track because our train was leaving in two minutes.
Once aboard it was a quick 15-20 minute ride into Manhattan and we disembarked at Penn Station and headed for the 32nd Street Exit to walk to our hotel for the night.
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