Day 11 - Hometime

It was our final day today, Kathryn woke to a message on her phone saying the flight had been delayed for 5 hours. Therefore the time of our flight departing would be midnight! We had the hotel room until the check-out at 12 so we had a bit of a lie in and packed our bags. I popped out quickly to get some steroid cream as I had quite a few insect bites from being in the park yesterday.

The hotel was great and we were able to leave our bags with them until we needed to travel to the airport later. As it was raining, we decided to take a tour of the NBC Studies that is located in Rockefella Center which was a short walk from the hotel. It was raining quite heavily at this point. Our tour was booked at 2pm so we had a coffee, quick snack and browsed the shops.

Walking over to Rockefella Center, no rain yet!

The tour started from the NBC Shop on the ground floor. There was a brief security check before we were lead into a small cinema. Unfortunately we were not able to take photos and therefore I have nothing to show here. The tour began with a short film that covered the history of NBC filming in New York since 1933. Initially it was a large radio production venue (hence the name “Radio City”), however with the development of television, the studies were slowly converted to TV.

We went upstairs and the first stop was one of the newsrooms used to present the nightly news. We then went up to a larger studio that Seth Meyers Late Show is presented from. This is a nightly talk show, and had seating for about 250 audience members, and a band! After this we went up to the production floors to see the rooms where all the directing is done, sound and graphics added. It was a good tour but a little short as we were finished in about 50 minutes.

Statue and ice rink below Rockefella Center

We browsed the shops a bit more before having dinner. We went to Bill’s Burger Bar that was also situated in Rockefellla Center. We ate very slowly, knowing that all we really had remaining was to go to the airport. We sat by the window and watched as the rain poured in heavy bursts periodically.

To avoid the rain, we got the Subway back to Bryant Park which was near where we were staying. I made a final purchase of some baseball caps and then we found a coffee shop to sit for a bit longer. I actually had a really decent cup of tea which was very surprising.

We managed to wait it out until about 7pm before going back to the hotel. We were able to use their facilities to change into some fresh and comfortable clothes. It was only drizzling by the time we left. It was a short walk back to the Subway. Thankfully then temperature inside the Subway had started to drop from earlier, whilst we waited on the platform. Eventually an “M” train arrived and we rode this two stops before switching to an “E” train.

"M" train to the airport

It takes about 30-40 minutes to ride the Subway to the airport. We were very thankful for a passenger who spotted we were going to the Airport and advised we switched trains again as this train was actually going to finish at a different destination. Therefore we had a short wait on the platform and finally rode the train into JFK airport.

View of airport from the Airtrain

When we checked in, the staff advised us we could claim a voucher to use in the airport. So once we went through security, we grabbed this and then had a quick dinner. Kathryn had a salad and I ate some crisps as it was now just about 10pm and I wasn’t that hungry. By about 11:40pm we started to board. Unfortunately we were delayed further as 4 passengers had not boarded. It took about another half an hour for 2 more to turn up, and the other 2 to have their baggage removed from the airplane.

Our airplane to take us home

We finally took off about 00:20am and the flight was quite uneventful. I found it easier to get some sleep as the flight was later and there was no need to eat any food.

We are on the train back to Leeds now. It seems to be very stormy here; wet and windy! Very similar to what we have just left in the US. There was a bit of an incident on the train which has delayed us further, although we are hoping to be back for about 3pm. Then we will have a quick trip to the supermarket before getting some rest for the weekend!