Day 1: Home to New York

At some point last year Tim was browsing the British Airways sale and noticed that flights to New York were really cheap. Really really cheap! New York wasn't a place we'd previously had plans to go to, but once we saw it was possible to get return flights for around £400 each, it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss out on. Before we knew it we had booked a long weekend for February.

Our flight this morning was at 09.35 from Heathrow. Back when we booked it this had felt like a relatively civilised flight time, but I hadn't remembered at that point that you are supposed to be at the airport three hours before a transatlantic flight. Once I started counting back to what time we'd actually have to get up and leave home this morning, I convinced myself that it would make more sense to stay at a hotel near the airport the night before. So on Thursday evening after work we drove down to Heathrow.

I'd chosen an airport hotel that was described as having an enormous car park and where it was possible to leave the car for the duration of our trip, catching a shuttle bus to the airport terminal in the morning. It seemed like a great idea, but when we eventually arrived at the hotel on Thursday evening I was shocked to see that not only was every available car parking space already full, but people were already parked on double yellow lines and random grass verges. Oh dear!

The hotel was clearly selling more parking spaces than it actually had. We spent a rather fraught 20 minutes or so circling around the car park and failing to find a space. I was not very impressed! But then, fortunately, we happened to be in the right place at the right time when someone came to move their car and we had a space. Phew!!

Even though we were now at the airport we still had a fairly early start on Friday morning, with a shuttle booked to pick us up at 6am. We actually ended up at the airport slightly too early, with a bit of time to kill before check-in opened for our flight at 06.35. I'd tried to check us in online from home on Thursday morning but run into some technical difficulties with the BA website, which confirmed that we were checked in but then refused to give me a boarding pass on the grounds that our travel documents were invalid. I knew our travel documents definitely weren't invalid - and some googling seemed to suggest it was a random BA IT issue - but it was still slightly disconcerting.

When it got to 06.35 we attempted to negotiate one of the self-check-in kiosks at the airport. The kiosk scanned our passports, then asked us whether we had a visa for the USA. We were slightly confused by this question because we didn't have (or need) actual visas, but we had valid ESTAs (which is effectively a visa waiver). We answered "no" to the visa question in the end and, rather than boarding passes, the machine presented us with two slips of paper telling us to seek assistance.

We sought assistance and eventually ended up in a queue to have our documents checked. The whole thing was slightly nerve-wracking! But when I got to the front, the check-in lady had a quick look at my passport, determined it was fine... and then told me I'd been upgraded  That was rather unexpected! Luckily Tim was upgraded too and we were soon both in possession of boarding passes for business class. How exciting!

We got through security and had time for a sausage sandwich in Wetherspoons before boarding our flight. The business class section of the flight was huge - we were in row 19 and there were multiple more rows behind us. They were lovely seats with lots of leg room.

While we waited for take-off we were served a welcome drink.

It was only about 9am in the morning at this point so it did feel a bit early to be drinking champagne, but it was going to be a weird day for our body clocks with changing time zones anyway!

The flight took off surprisingly promptly and once we were in the air we were served a cocktail; this one was a mixture of cranberry, orange and vodka and it was really nice

Whilst I was enjoying the drinks, I was a little bit sceptical of the food menu and feeling like my eating preferences maybe weren't posh enough for business class  We were asked to choose a starter, main course and pudding so I attempted to go with the least bad options. We both had burrata for the starter, which was actually nicer than I expected.

The main course was shepherd's pie which, considering I don't like shepherd's pie, was actually okay. I ate nearly half of it in the end.

Pudding was the best - a chocolate and raspberry dessert

Once the meal was finished they dimmed the lights in the cabin and most people seemed to go to sleep. The flight was eight hours in total and when there was just over an hour of the journey left, the cabin crew came round again asking if we wanted afternoon tea!

I didn't fancy the sandwiches but there was a lovely plain scone with clotted cream and two little cakes  By the time we'd eaten that we were nearly there.

I had thought we might spend ages queuing to get through immigration - some reports I'd seen online suggested people had had to wait for up to three hours - but it was all very smooth. I think we were fingerprinted and stamped in within 15 minutes of getting off the plane.

We hadn't checked in any luggage, so after passport control we were free to make our way into the centre of New York. It was all very easy; we caught something called the Airtrain from the terminal to a station called Jamaica, then changed onto a second train which took us to Penn Station.

As we stepped out of the station we got our first view of the tall buildings of New York.

The whole journey had been so efficient that it was only around 13.30 local time and we had time to kill before we could check into our hotel at 15.00. The hotel we're staying in isn't far from Central Park, so we walked in that direction. When we reached the park we were surprised to see that it looked quite snowy!

It didn't actually feel that cold in New York - at least, not compared to Lapland - but it obviously had been quite cold relatively recently.

We strolled around the park for a while, admiring the views of the skyscrapers.

They were all different shapes and sizes.

There were a couple of towers in particular which were really tall and thin.

The park itself was really beautiful, with lots of trees. These were American elm.

It was also huge. We walked for ages before we reached a lake that was completely frozen.

A bit further on we found a random statue of a Polish king...

...and then a second frozen lake.

I think we were only about halfway through the park by this point but it was now just after half two, so we turned around and began walking back towards the hotel. As we got closer we caught sight of a rather famous building - Trump Tower!

That's one landmark ticked off our list at least

We checked into the hotel, where we've got a nice spacious room. Our check-in info included a list of which floors the ice machines are on, so if we develop an overwhelming need for ice in the middle of the night we'll know where to go!

It's been an exciting day - but a very long one - so we were glad to get to the room and have a nap