We Made It Across The Pond

Let’s begin this post with a game we played while waiting at Gatwick airport for our Lisbon flight to show up on the Departures board. It’s called “Where is that City?” If you want to play, too, take a look at the list of locations below. This is a small selection from the cities we guessed at ourselves. We are both geography nerds. Try not to look them up yet and see how you do. Answers are at the bottom of the post.

• Tenerife
• Heraklion
• Larnaca
• Split
• Alicante
• Antalya
• Sharm El Sheikh
• Preveza
• Faro
• Paphos
• Dalaman
• Chania

While you are thinking, I’ll report on our travel experience.

Connecticut

Technically, our first stop away from our Maine house was just to western Connecticut where Trev’s folks live. As always, we had a spectacular time. My mother-in-law is a great cook and she and her husband are grill masters. She often shops at an incredible seafood market, Monroe Fish Market, and we dined on the best grilled swordfish any of us had ever had. 

Sprinkle in rhubarb and pineapple crisp, salmon, clams, asparagus, wine and cocktails, and, well, you get the picture. The food is so good at their house, we don’t really need to go out. We did decide, however, to have a “last meal” together out at Nouveau Monde in Sandy Hook. It was fantastic. Had to include a photo, never mind that we have our eyes closed. My in-laws look great – and clearly have better photo posing skills than we do.

From there, we needed to get to JFK Airport in New York. We’ve done this before, but usually just for a night or weekend in the city to visit friends and, well, enjoy all that the Big Apple offers.  The strategy in the past was to drive 30 minutes to a train station and then ride the train an hour or more into Grand Central.

If we had done that, to further get to JFK, it appeared we would either need to take a train, bus, or uber.  None of this sounded appealing with worries about travel times, traffic, managing luggage (no matter how minimal), and cost. Instead, we opted for an Uber ride door-to-door. Perhaps a splurge but infinitely nicer with no interchanges or moving luggage, etc. It was almost two hours and actually not that much more when we estimated the cost of train and transit fares.

We had a great driver in a comfortable car and the bonus was he was entertainingly chatty. Much like bartenders are culturally known to be the anonymous folks people tell everything to, it was eye-opening to realize Uber and Lyft drivers have a unique view of society. I’m sure they observe both the best and worst of society, but we heard some doozies about the latter.

Catching Up With Friends in New York

Because we had almost a whole day to play with, we decided to actually meet up with some very dear friends. We haven’t seen them since before the pandemic, and in that time they’ve had a child. Catching up with them, walking to Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, and enjoying the skyline across the East River turned out to be the best way to pass the time before our flight. (Why yes, that is the Empire State Building over my right shoulder.)

Yes, you read that right – Smorgasburg. Wow. On Saturdays in the summer a shocking number of food trucks show up. You can find everything from Maine Lobster Rolls (Not, we’ve had our fill) to Peruvian food. We all made some choices to share including a Japanese pancake, Curried Vegetable Puffs (Vietnamese), Thai street food, and Chinese dumplings. For dessert, we sampled some vegan donuts. We walked it off by heading to Domino Park in the shadow of the currently-being-revitalized old Domino Sugar factory. New York is really amazing with so many cultures and languages – people doing their thing from all walks of life. 

All that was just wonderful, but not as wonderful as getting to meet our friends’ child for the first time and reconnecting with two of the best people we know.  It had been too long (darn that pandemic) and as everyone knows, picking up right where you leave off with dear friends is as special as it gets.

From there it was (or should have been) a quick trip to JFK but wow, the traffic. Still, no problems making it to the gate and boarding. This was our first time on British Airways and it went great. The safety video was hilarious, the crew extremely polite, and a very smooth flight with free drinks and good food. Below is our pre-flight preparation! There was also a shared salad involved.

Side Note

At this point, I can circle back and provide an initial review of those noise canceling headphones. In a word, fabulous. In a previous post I was asked in the comments which kind I bought. I ended up with Sony WH0001-XM4s purchased used off of Ebay. There were lots available, but I was determined to find a pair with their case and all the cords. While used XM3s are cheaper (and an older iteration), reviews seemed to indicate the XM4s were leaps and bounds better. I didn’t want to spend a ton, but I wanted to invest in a pair that would work well and last me. I’m so, so happy with them. Not only was I able to hear all the dialogue in movies, but when laying my head back to try and snooze they eliminated the plane noise. They were so effective that if Trev wanted to ask me something, I had to take them off to hear him.

Ok, back to our original programming. 

Gatwick Airport, London – Woo Hoo

We knew sleeping on the plane might be hit or miss, and indeed we both probably only had between 1 and 2 hours of off-an-on snoozing. My brilliant husband planned ahead and reserved us space at the Gatwick airport with Yotel. This is an in-the-airport-but-outside-security mini hotel room pod thing. You get a four-hour reservation for a private and tiny, but wholly adequate, little room with a murphy-ish queen bed and bathroom with shower. It has a TV but we hardly had it on.

Yotel was easy to get to. It was clean. It was quiet. With lights off, very dark. It saved us. We both had a solid 3-hour sleep and a shower. We forgot to take a photo (jetlag, anyone?) but if you search for ‘yotel hotel gatwick’ and see a weird image of purple lights in a hallway, yeah, it looks EXACTLY like that. When we left to venture back into the airport for brunch we felt refreshed and human again. I was worried about the hassle of having to go back through security, but it was easy and let me tell you, they have this figured out way better than the U.S. Leave it to the Brits who know how to queue.

So as I write this, we are still waiting for our gate number to show up. It seems EasyJet plays it fast and loose. The flight is on the board but gate info isn’t showing up until about an hour before departure. So, my next post will be from Lisbon, but let’s see how you did on our geography quiz.

• Tenerife – Canary Islands, Spain
• Heraklion – Crete, Greece
• Alicante – Spain
• Larnac – Cyprus
• Split – Croatia
• Antalya – Turkey
• Sharm El Sheikh – Egypt
• Preveza – Greece
• Faro – Portugal
• Paphos – Greece
• Dalaman – Turkey
• Chania – Greece