Flight to New York

 My driver arrived in good time for my 05:30 pickup and after a bit of chat at the start, had a quiet journey down to Heathrow, arriving just after 7am.  I had already seen last night that my plane had been an hour late leaving, so I expected that my flight would be delayed similarly, and indeed it was an hour late departing.  However, I was able to have breakfast in the lounge and wait there umtil it was ready to board.  As usual, the gate for my flight was right at the far end of the concourse.

Since I booked so late, I had had a limited choice of seats, and I was in a centre seat which has no view out of a window which was a shame, atlhough the view is only really important on take-off and landing.  The food was good and Kristy looked after our aisle very well.  Despite leaving 40 minutes late, we touched down on time at 13:08 and despite the Global Entry kiosk rejecting me (apparently because it's been so long since I visited the USA) I was able to go through the rejects lane rather than the very long standard queue.  All in all, I was past all the controls and customs in 20 minutes and then it was the Airtrain, 20 minute wait for the NJ Transit train to New York, the short subway trip uptown, finally arriving at my hotel at 15:08 - exactly two hours after touching down.

Pleasingly, and somewhat to my surprise, New York now lets you use phones and contactless cards for travel and my Mastercard operated the OMNY readers just fine every time.  They have automatic fare capping, but as usual for the USA, it works in a silly way: once you have made 12 trips, all subsequent trips for that week are free, but a week is always Monday-Sunday, so as I was there Saturday-Tuesday, that's two separate weeks, so I never hit the cap!

I decided not to race up to Yankee Stadium to see the second half of the afternoon's game, so I had a quiet dinner and Frankie & Johnny's steakhouse just a short distance from my hotel.

The M Social hotel is in a fabulous location - it's on 52nd Street about 50 yards off Broadway, just one or two blocks from a number of different subway lines.  The $40 daily resort fee is irritating, but includes a $10 bar credit - although I never used it, but the room was correspondingly cheaper than most of the other big hotels.  I would definitely stay here again.  Whilst we know that the USA has a different idea of how to name the different levels in a building, this one was special.  You enter at street level which the elevator calls "5".  You go to the lobby level, which is quite a way up - it's the only other floor that it goes to.  Despite there being a "trendy" and energetic vibe in the lobby and bar area, fortunately, you can't hear it at all up in the rooms, which start at level 1, then "FC" whatever that is, then 9 and all the way up to the 30s, excepting 13.

I had a distant view of the Hudson River from my window, although it wasn't so much to look at from the 18th floor. I hadn't been expecting to see wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but it could have been nicer from a higher floor.  The bar area was fairly large and had a terrace that overlooks Broadway.