Our Holiday Trip to NY

As travel goes, flying on a holiday week/weekend has never been a problem. I have been flying for thanksgiving and/or christmas for years. My trick, take the earliest flight in the morning. Generally there is no lines, you sail through secruity and there is usually no delays. So that is what we did for our trip to New York on the 26th. We left the house at 5:30 am for our 7:00am flight. We should have gotten to the airport by 6:00am and had an hour to check our luggage and go through security and head to our gate. Normally that all takes all of 15-20 minutes. Well I knew we were in for it when we pulled into the airport, the line to go up to the departures drop off was very long. I kept looking at my watch and panic started creeping in. Oh my god...we are really cutting this close. But it is so early. Could everyone have figured out my holiday travel system? Well the cab driver asked if we wanted to bypass the departures and be dropped off at arrivals. He thought becasue we had so much stuff we wouldn't want to do it, but we have a system and thougth it was a great idea. So we got dropped off very quickly at arrivals and made our way upstairs to check our luggage. Inside was evenworse, the lines to use the e-check in were huge, and I mean huge and so were the security lines. I knew we couldn't wait on both lines and make our flight.

Being the New Yorker I am, I snaked my way through the crowd and went outside to the curb side check in...and zoomed passed 2 or 3 of them before I found one with hardly a line. One lady thought I cut her in line, but there were 2 lines and my line moved faster. I just ignored her because we were late and we had to get out of there. Luckily our luggage wasn't too heavy and checking our luggage only took about 15 minutes. So now it is about 6:20 and our flight leaves at 7:00...so we do the same thing we did for our luggage for security...we ran through the airport looking for the shortest security line and found it. We were in line for about 10-15 minutes. So at 6:30 we were finally headed to our gate.

Our gate, normally on the G concourse...was on the B concourse. I have never been to the B concourse but it is very far away. We first took the monorail as far as we could, then we went down an elevator and back up another elevator and walked forever. We finally got to the gate assigned at 6;45 and notice the gates changed. Luckily it was just a few gates down and not on another concourse. When we got to our real gate we noticed that the flight was delayed a few minutes so we had time to catch our breaths. I was planning on getting breakfast at the airport because we usually have time to do so. So we didn't do that and I didn't bring anyting but snacks for Harrison. I am the worst mom. So for breakfast he had fruit snacks, raisins, cookies and milk.

When we got on the plane, I was so excited because we were in row 11. I thought finally the front of the plane. Normally they stick us in the last row.... If you weren't aware, the back of the plane is commonly called "the family section"...translation....the place where we stick the babies. But boy was I mistaken....row 11 was the last row in the plane and it was 2 seats on each side, so Cliff got to sit accross the isle from us. The flight it self was very smooth. I was a bit apprehensive because the size of the plane, I thought I would get sick, but luckily I didn't.

The fun didn't end there. When we landed in NY, there was no jetway. It was like we landed in the Caribbean. We actually got off the plan on the tarmac. We walked down the stairs and were outside right next to the plane. Normally, no biggie. But try doing this unexpectedly, Carrying a 2 year old, your winter coats, purse, a lunch sack and your carry on bag. I had a feeling I was going to fall down the stairs. I saw there was a airline worker at the bottom of the stairs helping people, so I gave him all my stuff and walked down only with Harrison. Cliff had to menouver with the car seat. Harrison was absolutely stunned that he was so close to an actual airplane. His eyes were huge and he screamed..."that airplane" and pointed to our plane.

We were very happy to finally be in NY.