Our Grateful Life

The Hood, the Subway and Paige Davis...

We have left the resort and have snuggled in for a 2 hour wait in the vastness that is the Antigua International Airport.  It's huge.  Seriously.  There are 10 gates on our end.  Now granted all ten of those gates are lined up in a row with all of 40 seats waiting to board but still. There's duty free shopping in case we needed some Antiguan Rum to take back with us.  There's also a music store but I can safely say I've heard enough "Caribbeanized" pop songs to hold me over for a while.  You haven't lived until you've heard "Yesterday" played by a steel drum band.  

So with all this free time, I thought we should go back to the beginning of our trip to catch you up. Don't worry.  It'll be worth the 5 minutes it'll take you to read this.

The trip began with us sitting in the back of plane with a group of teenagers and their youth leaders going on some sort of mission trip to NYC.  I'm sure there are lots of people in the greater New York City metropolitan area who are thirsting for some teenage witnessing.  One of the kids had been playing his guitar in the airport.  He had blond highlights, spiky hair and was dressed like a cross between a skater and a beach bum.  Let's just say, he thought he was way cooler than he actually was.  Anyway, I am happy to report they were all very well behaved.

Once we arrived, we waited patiently for our luggage to arrive.  And waited.  And waited.  We finally had to face the reality that we might, possibly be without our bags.  So off to Lost Luggage we went where a lovely lady, carrying the biggest handbag I've ever seen and with the word PRADA larger than my purse, must have been convinced that the amount of time it would take Delta to find her luggage was directly related to the volume of her voice.   It's likely she was correct but I think the louder she got the longer it was going to take and I feel 99.9% certain that's not the outcome she was hoping for.  

We had 2 choices:  have Delta direct our bags to NYC and come back to the airport at 9:00 pm to pick them up or send them on to Antigua and pick them up there.  We opted not to come back to the airport.  Here's the pictures of us when we realized we would need to do some serious shopping before our dinner reservations at Tavern on the Green that evening:

However, we quickly realized that while I would likely easily be able to find a dress to match my patent leather white wedge shoes I was wearing, Chris would need to buy a pair of shoes since tennis shoes were not dress code.  That added serious dough onto the cost of the shopping trip and thus, we cancelled dinner reservations.  Oh well.  I'm sure we'll come to NYC again sometime. 

On to our hotel we went.  At this point, it was now 2:00 pm in the afternoon and we not eaten anything, except for 2 cookies on the plane, since our Chick-fil-A biscuits at 7:00 am that morning. The room was nice.  Small but then again, everything in that darn city is small.  I opened the curtains and behold, the view from our room:

Stunning, isn't it?  

We went back down to the front desk, got a brief lesson on the subway and how to get to Times Square and away we went.  I have to say, I was pretty impressed with Chris and his ability to navigate the subway system.  I was completely lost and more than a little intimidated by all the people.  We climbed on to the car and settled in for our 30 minute ride.  About 30 seconds in, we realized the air conditioning was not working on that car.  We made it about 20 minutes before we changed cars.  I was nervous about moving but eventually, I couldn't take it anymore.

We came out of the tunnels and went in search of food.  We selected the Hard Rock Cafe. Largely because even though we could eat at the Hard Rock in Dallas, we won't and we felt pretty certain the food would be all right.  It was, just that, all right.  By the time we left, there was a line of people waiting to get in.  

After dinner, we needed to do some shopping.  Despite Linda's suggestion that we pack a small carry on with our clothes, toiletries and basic necessities so we wouldn't have to use our large suitcases, we had not done so.  Leaving us with some great books, a laptop, camera, video camera and my makeup but nothing else.  We needed, well, most everything.  We went to the Gap, Ann Taylor Loft and a local drug store.  Delta says they will reimburse us for what we had to purchase due to lost luggage but since I've dealt with this particular airline before on their lost luggage policy, I'm not holding my breath.  We saved the receipts just in case.  

After buying the things we needed, we went to buy some things we didn't need.

Like a bag of orange and blue peanut M&M's.  

And a tank top and some running socks from Nike Town.  THE coolest place ever.  It was totally worth the 5 miles we had to walk to get there.

We went back to the Subway and walked like 62 miles underground to find our train.  On the way, we passed Paige Davis.  She was wearing a white sundress and she's really tall.  She looked right at me.  

Likely because I was the only other female wearing white in the entire Subway system.  But hey, we shared a moment.  

In our rush to get back, we managed to get on the wrong train.  We realized it almost immediately but still, that meant another 62 mile hike to get back to where we needed to be.  Once we finally made it back to the stop for our hotel, it was dark and we quickly realized we were in the hood. Some guy in a black car pulled over and asked if we needed a taxi and I immediately jumped in.

Only after we were in the car did I realized the vehicle said "Taxi" absolutely no where and there was no meter.  I was praying hard this guy didn't decide he wanted to kill us while Chris was pulling out his IPhone and getting ready to dial 911.  Thankfully, he dropped us off in front of our hotel.  We both agreed that I had been stupid but that we were both uncomfortable standing out like big neon white lights on the street corner.  

Needless to say, we canceled our reservations at that hotel for the return trip.  We are now staying in the middle of Times Square.  Seemed much safer than staying in the hood. 

Even if we did see Paige Davis in the subway.