NYC – Our Pioneer US Encounter

We were headed for NYC in the last week of October and managed to leave on the last flight out just before Sandy hit.

Boy!! It was quite an experience!!! We actually weren’t that aware of how serious it was. I learnt about the weather warning through the babysister’s friend in Perth, who asked when we were leaving and when i mentioned Sunday, the response i got was, “well, it will be alright- you won’t be affected.”

Still i thought that it would be one of those bad, but not too bad weather warnings still, just like in Perth sometimes, until………

The Mister turned on the TV in the hotel
room and we saw the various updates from the authorities…AND……

Mister: “Bea, i think we should leave earlier later this evening, flight’s at 8.10pm so maybe we leave say about 5pm instead of 6pm?”

Me: “Ermmmm…. i think we should leave EARLIER than that!! Make it 3.45pm”

Mister: “hmmmm…. won’t that be too early?? but ok…”

For some reason, something just told me to leave way earlier and I made the Mister ring the Limo to come even earlier than 3.45pm afterwards, but to no avail.

True enough, soon on the news, it was announced that train stations were going to be shut, bus services were coming to a halt, evacuation plans were made and in fact began…seemed really serious…

Meanwhile we still had the whole morning and a bit of the afternoon, we went around to get some photos and just walked around.

We could see sandbags being placed on some parts of the street, the usually, ever so busy NYC- the city that never sleeps, seemed rather sleepy for once, slowly, people began to evacuate, those who were left seemed like mostly tourists who were seen walking around…

Everyone was rushing to get out of town..
3.45pm: Limo arrived, boy were we glad when we saw the Limo as most other transportation services had cancelled all services…
Soon enough, we were on our way to JFK…along the way, we could see people preparing for Sandy’s landfall…

Upon arrival at JFK, we took about over 2 hrs to clear security, as they were super understaffed due to staff members having left in preparation of Sandy, we could see passengers getting anxious as flights were delayed, some even cancelled and the JFK airport was even going to be shut down – we were also nervous as our flight was delayed too but we had a close shave there. We couldn’t be more relieved upon touching down in Toronto..

What an experience! Our first time into the US, we started off with a very much delayed flight out from Toronto due to fog, the Mister being detained, queried for almost an hour and then to top it all up and finishing it off- SANDY…

Oh well it was all worth it, it was also my birthday, we managed to kill several birds with one stone, nevertheless, it was a bitter-sweet birthday this year….

As long as the 3 other birthday messages from the other continent arrived, i’m a happy camper!!!!

Here’s some photos of NYC the weekend before Sandy hit…