28th-29th - Last day and return

My friend left early in the morning so after saying our goodbyes I went back to sleep for another hour. Woke up, got ready and packed everything, checked out and had the hotel to store my bag until leaving for the airport.

The plan today was to go visit the Intrepid museum; basically they took the old carrier Intrepid and made it into a museum. You have access to hangars and flight deck primarily but also a bit of the gallery and berthing. The day didn’t start out too well when exiting the hotel with rain, but when I made it out and up on the flight deck several hours later it fortunately had stopped.

Coming up through the street and seeing the Intrepid appear sitting the dock I almost peed my pants when seeing what looked like a SR-71 on the flight deck (might just have been the rain, though).  Walking through the hangar and seeing the different equipment and outfitting of the internals of the ship was quite interesting, but on the flight deck they had lined up several planes and helicopters used by the navy at some point or the enemy. I also found that it wasn’t an SR-71 but rather an A-12, the predecessor to the SR-71. It was still fun to see up close, though.

North American aviation FJ-3 Fury. 

Piasecki Hup / UH-25 Retriever.

Grumman F9F-8 (AF-9J) Cougar.

Grumman F11F (F-11A) Tiger.

Grumman A-6E Intruder.

Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

Lockheed A-12.

General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir.

Grumman (WF-2) E-1B Tracer.

McDonnell F3H-2N (F-3B) Demon.

Dassault Etendard IV M.

Aermacchi MB-339.

Sikorsky HH-52 Seaguard.

Sikorsky HRS (H-19) Chickasaw.

Bell AH-1J Sea Cobra.

Bell UH-1A Iroquois (Huey).

British Aerospace AV-8C Harrier.

McDonnell F-4N Phantom II.

Douglas XBT2D-1 Dauntless II (AD-1 Skyraider).

Mikoyan Gurevich MIG-17 / PZL-Mielec LIM-5 (NATO code name Fresco).

Mikoyan Gurevich MIG-21 PFM (NATO code name Fishbed F).

Chance Vought (F8U) F-8K Crusader.

As a bonus I decided to pay a bit extra to see the space shuttle Enterprise which was parked in a small building put on the rear end of the flight deck. It was huge up close and it was fun to experience.

View of the front half of the flight deck.

The navigating bridge.

The island.

The Space Shuttle Enterprise.

British Aerospace / Aerospatiale Concorde.

The rest of the day was spent walking around before taking the subway and AirTrain to the airport. It was surprisingly easy but taking the subway 1830 there were no seating due to it being rush hour – which was a bit of a struggle not having a chance to put down my bags so legs and feet got a bit sore towards the end. Everyone says that JFK is a huge airport but the only part I saw was terminal 1 (out of 6) with only 10 gates so it didn’t seem very impressive. (The south terminal in Gatwick where I had a layover was much bigger and more interesting). A restaurant had a sign saying to wait to be seated by a server. I saw a family of 4 go directly past that sign and started moving seats around to have space around a table – they were quickly stopped and asked to wait at the entrance as instructed by the sign. I couldn’t help but think that was a very Danish behavior – and when queuing up behind them yup; they were Danish. It felt pretty good being pulled up ahead of them as they suddenly had a single seat available. The flight from Gatwick was almost an hour delayed and not having slept much from NYC I was hoping to sleep all 1½ hours on this flight. I passed out the moment I sat down but woke up less than 40 minutes later, realizing that next to me two parents were sitting with a less than one year kid that couldn’t stop screaming and bawling. No more sleep. I think it’s fortunate for the kid (and probably me) that windows on a plane can’t be opened. I guess it was very intentional that the parents avoided all eye contact. I have never felt so relieved before when getting off a plane.

And then taking the train I ended up sitting close to another screaming baby. Life, why do you hate me?

Big thanks to Lisa for her company and amazing positive attitude to everything. Apart from the demon spawn this was a great trip. A week in NYC was well timed, I could probably spend a couple of more days but after that I would probably start having to do more intensive searches for activities I’d be interested in. I (we) ended up enjoying the entire time, never bored but never stressed either. City trips will not become a habit but it was a nice variant from my usual wildlife/climb/trekking trips.