Happy Valentines Day!  And happy 36 hour travel day!  The day begins on a bit of a downer – we thought we were getting into NYC at 6 or 7am and have a day-room at the Hilton Garden Inn booked so we can spend the day there in comfort before heading to JFK for our 6pm flight.  But the captain has been saying 10am arrival for days now, even as our disembarkation info says 8:30 for walk offs and Gian tells us it should be 8:30 or 8:45 when we begin.  As it turns out, the captain was correct – there was a huge storm and strong winds off the coast last night which slowed us down and we do indeed dock at 10am.  The negative is that we’ll not get maximum use of that day-room, but the positive is that we get great shots of the Statue of Liberty and the NYC skyline (yeah, including the artsy ones taken through the window above the tub in the bathroom!).

The suite benefits work in our favor once again.  Gian escorts us out to the gangway and we are quite literally the first people off the ship.  Yay!  We wind our way down through the port terminal then across the street to the corner of 12^th and 48^th to call a Lyft.  But before we do, a guy comes up to us and asks us if we want an Uber, and flashes an Uber logo on a placard.  We know better, but he’s there, and we hop in his big ole black SUV.  We end up negotiating the pricing, because we were just ordering a regular Lyft/Uber, not an X or XL, but it all works out fine as he is an expert at navigating the traffic to get us across town quickly and out to the hotel before noon. 

Now its time to just chill – catching up on emails, tax stuff, phone calls, etc. – while we wait for our flight time.  Ed makes use of the gym, I make use of the wifi!  3:30 rolls around too fast and before we know it, we are on the shuttle to the airport, checked in to our flight and in the lounge. 

Our first flight takes us to Vienna, where we have an hour and a half layover, that turns into an almost 3 hour layover because we have wicked tail winds that cut our flight by an hour and a half.  Otherwise, it’s a smooth flight, good food, good service and some time (for me) to sleep.  The Vienna lounge is empty when we arrive, but by the time we leave there isn’t a seat in the entire place.  We had really good timing getting there!

The Cape Town flight is packed solid (just like the Vienna flight) and it is a total scrum to get onboard, but we are positioned in the right place to be first of the coach class to board, get our seats and overhead space perfectly and settle in for our 11 hours of air time.  Surprisingly, the 11 hours goes by quite reasonably (I can’t say quickly, but it wasn’t as torturous as we had feared).  We watched movies (After the Wedding and something else I can’t remember), read, I napped, ate well, got some fabulous photos off the coast of Europe and of the Sahara desert and made it through without complaints.

We landed on time at 10:20, but passport control took forever and we didn’t get out to the hotel shuttle point until 11:40, missing the darn thing by 10 minutes.  Not wanting to wait until the midnight shuttle, we negotiate with a taxi guy standing there waiting for people just like us!  We probably paid too much for the 5 minute drive to the hotel, but at this point in our journey, we don’t care!  We just want to get checked in, have a drink at the bar and hit the hay.

In hindsight, we didn’t pay too much!  There were at least 5 groups in front of us checking in from the last shuttle, and by the time we finished our check in, got upstairs, dumped our bags and came back for the bar, we barely had 40 minutes before they closed.  Plus, the midnight shuttle passengers were still all in line to check in.  Good deal!  We had a couple of good glasses of wine (and cheap) and good beer with a fun, sweet bartender, then it was up to the room, showers to wash off 36 hours of gritty travel, and crash city.  I don’t think our heads had hit the pillow before we were sound asleep.