Monday, August 10, 2015

Far Rockaway

Since Golda and Ruby paid for their own trips to Europe, we had to find the cheapest flights.  They're young.  They can do layovers.  The flight back from Lisbon to New York was inexplicably cheap one day, and I booked it.  It was $450, and the lowest I ever saw that route for before or after was $600, so I got lucky that day.  The flight got into New York at 7 pm, so Scott and I thought it made sense to go meet the girls in New York, rather than have them just find a hotel and come home the next day.  Any excuse to travel, right?

We used JetBlue points for one of the tickets and booked the redeye for Tuesday night.  The girls were coming in on Thursday night, so we would have all day Wednesday and Thursday to explore New York.  The discussion began about what we would do with our time.  I had something in mind.  I have always wanted to go to Far Rockaway, ever since the first time I went to NY at age 14.  It's the end of the line on the A Train, so you always hear and see "Far Rockaway."  "This is the A train to Far Rockaway..."  Far Rockaway.  Far Rockaway.  It sounds so intriguing, so mysterious.  So far.  So rocky.  So away.  Definitely, nobody would know my name in Far Rockaway.

I had to see what was out there.  Scott thought that sounded like a monumental waste of time.  He pulled up pictures of urban decay and sent me articles about crime in the Rockaways.  I countered with my own foolproof argument:  "I'm still going there."

It's summer, and who knows when I'll ever be back in New York during the perfect season to tour a crime-infested urban jungle in the outer reaches of Queens, on the beach?  I had to.  We came up with the perfect plan:  a whole day where we split up and each of us does whatever they want.  Time alone on vacation is precious and almost never happens.  It sounded fun to both of us to break up for the day and then talk about our adventures over dinner.

When our flight arrived at JFK at 6 am, we took the airtrain to Howard Beach and then went our separate ways on the A train, Scott bound for Manhattan and me walking briskly toward fulfilling my dream:  Far Rockaway!  Far Rockaway...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm excited to hear all of the delicious details. Travel. Sigh. It's the best.

Michelle said...

You guys are so awesome!