Houston Expected weather: Hi 98F / Low 72F, Rain 3%

NYC Expected weather: Hi 78F / Low 71F, Rain 21-68%

If yesterday was the longest day, last night was the shortest night! Our driver to the airport arrived 15-20 minutes ahead of our requested time of 4:30am. Neither of us had really been able to sleep, so we were ready early. We found out there is such a thing as arriving at the airport too early though! IAH is under major construction, and we didn’t want to take any chances with traffic delays or gate changes. The United app told us to check-in at Terminal D, so we had the driver drop us there. Turns out that check-in counter didn’t open until 6am! So, we traipsed via the tram and a long walk to Terminal C to check our bags, then a longer walk back to Terminal E to the United Club Lounge near our departure gate. Guess what? The United Club wasn’t open yet either, but we only had to wait about 15 minutes. Definitely, first world problems! LOL! But at least our plane was on-time departing, so all is well.

Our flight from Houston to Newark where we met up with our South Carolina friends, Keith & Paula, arrived around about 20 minutes early. We had private transportation arranged from the airport to our hotel in the Times Square area.. Our hotel rooms weren’t ready yet, so we checked our bags and headed to lunch. Paula found a deli near the hotel that had good recommendations on TripAdvisor and seemed like a quintessential NY lunch idea. So, off we went, the map app said we’d arrived, but it was nowhere in sight. We asked someone working nearby, they weren’t familiar with it; we asked one of NYPD’s finest on a street corner near where we thought it should be – he didn’t really know either. We finally determined it must be out of business! So, plan B – Tony’s Di Napoli for family style Italian which has been in business since 1959. We ordered Tony’s Veal and Linguine Bolognese for the 4 of us. Both were great – and we couldn’t finish it all.

From Top Left Clockwise: View from hotel; Nancy, Dave, Keith, Paula in front of Tony’s; Keith, Paula, Nancy, Dave at Tony’s; Paula, Keith, Dave, Nancy near Times Square

Back to the hotel and our rooms were ready. We lucked out on our walking around to find lunch as the rain seemed to be holding off, but the chances increase overnight and tomorrow and it’s definitely clouding up (see above picture). So, now we are resting up, and I’m updating the blog and organizing to board Viking Saturn tomorrow.

As both couples had very, very early morning flights, we don’t expect to be up to doing much this evening. I had checked off and on didn’t find any live entertainment options scheduled that I just had to see. That was a little disappointing as I usually try to take advantage when in NYC, but I think we are all too tired anyway. Plus we’ll get sufficient entertainment on the ship over the next two weeks (not the same caliber, but it’ll do!). Besides, in the original plan we didn’t even think we’d be in Manhattan!

Note: I take the lousiest selfies – so my apologies! I blame it on being “undertall”.