WOULD YOU FLY TO NEW YORK FOR THE DAY?
Believe it or not you can – with a new £259 flight from Gatwick. A bleary-eyed JANE FRYER braved it. So was it worth the jet lag?
MOST people considering a day out would choose somewhere fairly close to home. Brighton, Blackpool, a restful few hours wallowing in the spa waters in Bath, if that’s your thing. At a push, if you’re feeling really crazy, perhaps Paris. But New York? No way.
Partly because it’s a bloody long way away — 7,000 miles and more than 14 hours in the air for a return trip, with a five-hour time difference just to throw a bit of jet lag into the mix. And partly because plane tickets have always been so pricey — generally more than £500 return.
In any event, the flight schedules have never really made it feasible. But not any more. Budget airline Norwegian is now offering day-return tickets to New York from just £259.
So you fly out at 6am, arrive at 9.20am Eastern Standard Time and, in theory, have 13 hours and ten minutes to enjoy, embrace, admire, imbibe, buy, absorb and generally experience everything the Big Apple has to offer, before you jet home again in a brand new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.
How brilliant, I thought. So earlier this week, with friends’ warnings ringing in my ears: ‘You’re mad. Crazy. You’ll be so tired you won’t be able to walk,’ and: ‘Bet you a tenner you’ll be divorcing by the time you get back,’ I whisked off my husband Miles for a romantic away-day.
Sod them and their miserable pessimism, we thought. What could go wrong? We have young children and busy jobs. We know what it is to be dog-tired. We never seem to sleep anyway, so what does it matter?
After all, think of all the fabulous things we could do in 13 hours and ten minutes in The City That Never Sleeps; the art, the culture, the food! We’ll amble along the streets, marvel at the noise, the shouting, the horns, the smells.
We’ll stuff our faces with bagels, hot dogs, roasted nuts and pastrami on rye. We’ll take in heart-stopping views, admire famous paintings in the Guggenheim and the Frick, shop until we drop — and when we can’t take any more, nurse cocktails in dingy jazz clubs. New York will be our oyster. We’ll do it all.
Or so we thought. Because, as is so often the case, the fantasy and the gritty-eyed reality didn’t quite match up. So here’s how it all turned out — the highs and lows to bear in mind if you, too, are ever mad enough to consider going to New York for the day. 3AM: Two alarms wake us from a fitful sleep and spirits are low in West London. Even more so when we discover that in the four hours we were asleep, we’d received a text saying the plane was delayed by an hour.
We wander around in a daze, drinking sugary tea and gently bickering over how delayed it would have to be to make it not worth going. ‘Maybe just one,’ suggests Miles grumpily. 4AM: Taxi to Gatwick’s South Terminal. A night at an airport hotel wouldn’t really have been in the spirit of a day trip, plus we didn’t want to lug around our pyjamas all day. 5AM: Check-in. We arrive groggy, floaty and ravenously hungry. With only hand luggage, we breeze through security. 5.30AM: Slightly bilious after two coffees, a bacon roll, a mini croissant and an ill- advised Mexican quesadilla, we kill time in the shops, where I try some special make-up designed to last for 24 hours — it will have its work cut out today. 7.30AM: An hour-and-a-half after our plane should have taken off, we wait impatiently at Gate 1 as a drunk fellow passenger with a vast beard is frogmarched away by security.
Day-trips to New York don’t really allow for delays. Our Big Apple time is trickling through our fingers, so we start pruning our schedule. We declare the Guggenheim and the Frick early victims, along with a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and a coffee at Dean & Deluca. 8AM: Unhelpfully early in the day, Miles says he’s losing the will to live. 8.30AM: On the runway, I applaud myself for having read an article entitled How To Survive A Norwegian Airlines Flight, which recommends bringing a blanket, headphones and food, because none is provided for free. But what do you expect for a lessthan-£300 return on ‘the world’s best low-cost, long-haul airline’? 11.20AM (NEW YORK) / 4:20PM (UK): After two beers, two meals, a glass of wine, two rom- coms, five episodes of The Archers and weathering the disappointment of discovering that nothing we’d downloaded on to the iPad from Netflix works, we touch down two hours late at JFK. 11.30AM: Unencumbered by luggage, kids, or ( sadly) sleep, we skip through the airport and into a cab in less than ten minutes. The only pause is caused by a startled immigration official called Charles who can’t get his head round our itinerary. ‘How long you folks staying?’ Just today. ‘Where are you staying?’ Nowhere. ‘No, where are you sleeping?’ On the plane on the way home. ‘Wow. You’re mad. People don’t do this for a reason. Have a strong drink. Good luck!’ 12.15PM: With time now very much of the essence, what could be better than a chopper ride to get our bearings?
We arrive at the Liberty Helicopters heliport, right at the bottom of Manhattan, just in time for the safety briefing, before we’re led out to a gleaming black chopper.
Exactly 18 exhilarating minutes later, we’ve seen it all: the Chrysler, Empire State and Flatiron buildings all gleaming in the sun; the dark squares where the Twin Towers once stood; the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis island; Rikers Island prison
complex; Central Park. (at $220 or £168 each this is not a snip — and worryingly close to the cost of our flight — but for sheer heady, heart-soaring enjoyment it is the best money we spend all day.) 1.30PM: From there, via Century 21 — a many-floored discount designer store where I pick up a cashmere hoodie for just $80 (£60) — to the Rockefeller Center, where the concierge orders us to ‘get up there and make some precious moments’.
We join the disappointingly long queue — don’t they know we’re in a hurry? — for another of the world’s best views, 70 stories up at the Top Of The Rock. 2PM: Oh, the view! The romance! The sky-scrapers and the taxis like little yellow ants below. But we can’t hang around, because we’ve got only eight-and-a-half hours left before we turn into pumpkins.
So we skip the gift shop and ice rink below — they’re cleaning the ice anyway — though we pause to admire the Christmas decorations and Tiffany & Co windows, and enter the hallowed shopping heaven that is Saks Fifth avenue. 3PM: after a half-an-hour spree, a smart new hat for Miles and pair of UGG boots for me, a nice lady from the makeup counter called Stacie accosts me. ‘Can I perk you up a bit?’ she says. ‘ Let me show you what we can do in a New York minute. You look tired.’
Tired?! I’m beyond tired. Floating, almost. But miraculously, still going strong. 3.15PM: Things get even better when, newly primped and preened by Stacie and sustained by a huge, fat hotdog from the corner of 6th avenue and West 50th, we slow down, start to relax and let it sink in.
We’re in New York! We’re walking past Radio City. We’re in Times Square. We’re passing Madison Square Garden. We’re being honked at and sworn at for ignoring the Walk/Don’t Walk signs. We’re snapping up bargains. (Designer trainers for £20!) We’re taking photos of steam billowing out of manhole covers.
It’s magical, romantic and incredibly exciting. It’s like being in a film, I trill to Miles.
4PM: and then, suddenly, it isn’t. Because just as we reach Central Park, it starts to rain. Heavy, icy rain.
My new UGGs start to stain and Miles is cold and wet and remembers that, other than the vinegary hotdog, we haven’t had any lunch. So Central Park is ditched. Wall Street is cancelled. Our visit to the Met — supposedly the cultural highlight of the trip — is crunched down to one grumpy glance at the magnificent foyer through the main entrance, and we hotfoot it to Barneys — quite possibly one of the world’s most expensive shops.
There we dry out and warm up and gawp in wonder at the impossibly smooth- skinned Upper-West- Side ladies of a certain age sipping spritzers in the ninth-floor bar. 4.30PM: With no cosy hotel room to retreat to and not hungry enough for a full meal, we opt for the obvious alternative: the ludicrously luxurious Majorelle bar in the Lowell Hotel.
after all, if we’re saving £300 a night on a hotel room, we can splurge on a couple of cocktails.
It is warm, dark, aromatic and wood-panelled with a mirrored wall of twinkling whiskeys and bourbons and an ancient barman called Brian, who makes the drinks strong enough to revive people who have been on the go for 19 hours. 6PM: after two Negronis — a lethal combination of gin, Campari and vermouth — and fistfuls of smoked almonds, we are flying again (this time metaphorically). Feeling reckless and spontaneous, we decide to drop in on some friends in Brooklyn who we haven’t seen for years. 7PM: Happily, after a 45minute cab ride, they’re in. and after lots of shrieking and clutching at the door of their beautiful brownstone, we sensibly start on tea, quickly trade it for cold beer and admire their children’s ambitious Lego creations. a huge spur-of-the-moment highlight. 8.50PM: When we arrive back at JFK, the Negroni/beer/ lack of sleep combination is not helpful. We twice get on the wrong escalator and only the florid, braying Englishman behind us stops us falling asleep in the longest security queue I’ve ever seen.
Spirits dip suddenly, particularly when we learn the flight is delayed by half an hour. 10PM: after a quick flit in the duty-free shop, we have a tentative refuelling stop by Gate 10 to eat crisps, wafer biscuits and $20 toasties and watch coverage of President Trump’s visit to South Korea on the telly. ‘I loved him on The apprentice,’ comments a waitress. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’ 11PM: Row 30. The cabin is terrifyingly brightly lit, if spotlessly clean, and Coldplay is blaring. It is 4am UK time. We’ve been on the go for 25 hours and have had four hours’ sleep in the last 45. Happily, we’re asleep before we have time to realise this. 9.30AM (UK) / 4.30AM (NEW YORK): We wake in time for breakfast feeling weirdly fine. apparently, Boeing 787 planes have a lower cabin air pressure than others, so passengers are supposed to absorb more oxygen, suffer less jet lag and feel more refreshed on arrival.
I think there’s something in it, because next to me, Miles is still wearing his new hat. and smiling. 10.30AM: ‘Welcome to London, where the local time is 10.30am,’ says the pilot. 1PM: Thirty-four hours after we set off — and after a dash to a toy shop for some ‘New York’ gifts for our sons, who were completely forgotten in the madness — we’re home, and the feeling of my soft pillow beneath my head almost makes me weep with joy.
There have been soaring highs, crashing lows, a clutch of bargains and a lot of laughs. It’s the City That Never Sleeps — and we certainly didn’t, nice though it would have been, just for a minute or two.
Lessons have been learned — we didn’t even manage a proper meal, for goodness’ sake. But we’d do it all again in a flash. Just as soon as we’ve had a good night’s sleep.