Holiday to Las Vegas in Dec 2013: Day 3 – New York (JFK) to Las Vegas (LAS)

We had switched off the light by 9:45 last night – it had been a long day! Of course that doesn’t translate into a long deep sleep does it!

I got up up around 3:30am and updated this blog, whilst Vick managed to get a bit more sleep than me.

We have organised a late check out at 2pm, and have a schedule arranged around food. So we are going to start at Appleby’s for breakfast (it opens at 7am, which is about 3 hours away…), and we are aiming to have lunch at Le Parker Meridien burger bar (I would imagine around 11am or so). What we will end up doing between lunch and 2pm I am not sure!

Went to Starbucks just after 6am when it opened, and then headed over to Appleby’s on West 50th St for breakfast which opened at 7am. Decided that we will do the High Line this morning before lunch at Le Parker.

Just done the High Line – it’s now a fair bit longer than we last saw it, and there’s a third phase being worked on which will take it up to 34th St.

Back in the hotel room for a rest. Think next stop will be Le Parker Meridien.

Headed out about 11am and Vick wanted a coffee so we popped into a Starbucks on the way to Le Parker. By the time we got to Le Parker it was about 11:30am and there were a fair few people sat at tables but there were still one or two tables free. No queue at the counter either. So we placed our order for 2 cheeseburgers, well done, the works but no pickle and one portion of fries. This must be the most down to earth restaurant in a hotel I have ever seen. There’s nothing pretentious about this place, but it has an atmosphere that is really vibrant.

Anyway, enough of the nonsense: the cheeseburgers were gorgeous, and even Vick said they were top notch.

After the best burgers in NYC, we headed into Central Park for a walk and to take in the sights. The paths were fairly slippy through snow and in parts mud, but we managed to reach the ice skating rink and then headed over towards Columbus Circle. We then headed back down 8th Avenue to the hotel where we packed up and got ready to go.

We ended up going down the wrong subway entrance at 50th St and couldn’t get on an Uptown platform, so we had to go down to 42nd St and swap over and pick up a northbound train. It actually worked out well since we ended up on an express E train, and this got us most of the way really quickly. However we got close to Jamaica when an announcement was mad that we needed to leave the train due to engineering works. We would have to jump on the following E train to reach Jamaica.

After finally reaching Jamaica (actually it’s the stop before Jamaica) and messing around with Metro card top ups to get on the AirTrain, we were finally back at T4 so that Vick could be interviewed for her Global Entry application. Somehow she managed to pass and she received her email approval about 15 mins later.

Got over to T8, through Security and into the Flagship lounge without too many problems, but that’s as good as it got. By the time we were ready to board, I was first in the queue, but my boarding card wouldn’t scan properly, and we then had 10 mins of tense discussion with the gate dragon who started saying that the ticket has been “lifted” and without a valid ticket we couldn’t board. Obviously we weren’t happy and we provided previous boarding cards and itineraries to prove we had purchased the seats. In the end she managed to frig the system so that we could get on board, but it felt touch and go at a number of moments.

On board now, and using the GoGo Inflight WiFi system to update the blog. Expecting to have dinner on board (with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream), and then grab a couple of hours kip.

Due to arrive at Vegas at around 8pm and we will see about picking up a car (hopefully a Mustang) tonight.

We arrived slightly ahead of schedule and were through the terminal fairly quickly. We had to queue up for the shuttle bus to the rental car centre (long queue) which was a bit disappointing – we must have done this last time and forgotten about it. Anyway got to the Dollar Express kiosk and bagged a lovely red Mustang convertible. That’ll do the job nicely.

Found Tropicana ok and checked in – the Diamond Members Check In Lounge was closed but a woman offered to check us in and we bypassed the main queue. Room is relatively high up, but doesn’t have much of a view of the strip, and I haven’t been offered a fast internet access code.

We went down to the sports bar and had a drink to get us into the Vegas mood. Had a quick scan around the property which is pretty small compared to some of the big hotels on the strip and hit the sack. Expecting to wake early and make use of the 24hr Starbucks which is on site.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to Las Vegas in Dec 2013