Spending the night in the Quito airport isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and the first customs agent we ran into was a real jerk, but the rest of the agents from immigration to customs were fantastic. And all three planes we were on had more legroom than I remember on any plane. It was great.
I do want to thank the French fútbol team. You guys have great fans. They chanted and stomped and sang for a good hour plus. And even though they were one floor below us, it was deafening and enough to keep all of us awake. Great job, guys!
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| Waiting for the plane in the Cuenca airport. |
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| Tali had a headache. Poor baby. |
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| Good friend, Jack Abercrombie, seeing us off in Quito. |
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| And we're off! |
I decided to fly into New York instead of directly into Cleveland because it would save us a boatload of money. And we really needed to catch our breath and get some sleep. I found a cute Airbnb apartment in Brooklyn for $100 a night and it has been great. So, even though we stayed for two nights in NYC along with two days of sightseeing, we still saved almost $1000. We leave on the 10:00pm bus tonight and arrive in Cleveland at 7:00am.
We arrived in New York half an hour early, grabbed a cab and headed to Brooklyn. The apartment is in a very diverse area. From the neighbors to the shop owners to the people on the streets, everyone has been kind and helpful. I have also noticed that my polite factor has increased since living in Ecuador. I always thought that I had good manners, but after living in Cuenca for three years they have greatly improved. Now it is hard to walk into an establishment and not greet every person in the place. Or every person on the street. My fellow expats, you know what I'm talking about.
We slept in very late on Wednesday because we didn't sleep very much at all in the past 24 hours. Finally we got ourselves out the door by 1:00pm. We headed to the subway two blocks away and requested the help of the subway manager. She was very funny. Chided Mark when he said good morning since it was actually afternoon. When she found out Finn and Tali were both eleven, she asked if he took all the food from her. Lol. Very nice lady who sent us on our way with all that we needed.
We headed to Battery Park first to see the Statue of Liberty. It was cloudy and quite blustery near the water, but it felt good. I was glad the sun wasn't out. We thought about taking the ferry to Ellis Island, but Finn still has motion sickness pretty badly and the water was quite choppy so we opted to go to the American Indian Museum instead. That was a great museum. They had a ton of stuff from Ecuador and Guatemala. It was fascinating. And free!
We stopped for lunch at a sandwich shop and then went to the 911 Memorial. I think they did a wonderful job making it a peaceful and serene place. It was very hard not to get teary-eyed. We decided not to go into the actual building, but it was still very moving and I think the kids got a lot out of it.
Our last stop for the day was Times Square and Rockefeller Center. That was fun! We ended the night with a Guinness at the Pig N Whistle. The perfect ending to a great day. One more day of sightseeing and then on to Cleveland!
