Editor’s Note: This will not be my best post ever due to some really ugly tech support problems that took more than an hour to fix. I want to get it online before we head out to breakfast. I promise to do better.

This is going to be tough. Or as I told Kathleen last night, “I need a sea day.” We’ve had only one full day, and I’m exhausted. I don’t have a lot of time to write and process photos to get this out to all of you. I would give you the entire schedule for yesterday, but that’s for the next post. This one is just to tell you the story of getting there: our bus pickup, our flight, our “luxury motor coach” into Manhattan, and an amazing dinner at Tony’s DiNapoli with some great friends.

Thursday morning at 4:30 am, we gave Keeley her final kisses and pets (she is staying at home with Kathleen’s daughter Michelle), and we set off for Trilogy’s clubhouse, where we would be met by two 14-passenger Sprinter vans I had arranged. They would whisk 21 of us off to SeaTac International Airport. (A quick note for regular readers: I know I promised Kathleen that after arranging all those buses in Scotland pre-pandemic, I would never do that again… but these were vans, not buses ??).

To get this all to work out, we had to find a way to get to the Clubhouse (about half a mile away for us, but 3-4 miles for others—Trilogy is a big place) and not leave our car in Trilogy’s woefully inadequate parking lot for an entire week. Some people actually had friends who liked them enough to get up out of bed and drive them there at that ungodly hour. Others were going to leave our car in the lot, and friends would pick it up later in the day. We had planned to do this, but our friends who were going to do our pick up got called away, and we got really lucky when a friend who is on the trip with us and lives just five houses away from the clubhouse let us park our car in her garage. Her son had her car, so there was room in her immaculate and well-organized garage for our car. We can’t thank her enough.

I had told everyone the vans would be there at 4:30 and that we would leave without them at 4:50. So I dropped Kathleen off at the clubhouse, where we found a BUNCH of people already there before 4:30, loading the vans. We got our luggage into the van, and I drove the short distance to where we would leave the car, then walked back to check off everyone on my van list and make sure we had everyone who had signed up to go with us. The only problem was that when I got back, one of the vans I had left for the airport was gone, and I had no idea who was in it. At this point, it’s only 4:40, and our driver wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave anyone behind since I had said we would wait until 4:50. But he told me that the other van had 10 people and we had 11, so I told him to go ahead, hoping and praying that we were not leaving anyone. Thankfully, everyone had been right on time (or early), and we all got there, WHEW!

The airport was far better than we expected. Kathleen and I hadn’t flown since we went to Africa last July (we drove to our October cruise), and SeaTac had made outstanding improvements to its security lines. We were through and on our way to the Alaska Air FC lounge in no time, where we hung out until we were called (right on time) to board. The flight was smooth, and since we had left early, we arrived at JFK in NYC half an hour early. Of course, that meant there was still a plane at our gate, so we sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes. I wish they would figure this out. Why get us there early just to sit on the plane and wait? Eventually, we got off the plane and headed to baggage claim. Alaska Air had done a great job with all our luggage, and I am pretty sure not a single person in our group lost a suitcase.

JFK is a BIG airport, but when we had our bags, Mike (one of our superb guides from Break-Away tours) was waiting to meet us. He got us out and onto our “luxury motor coach,” and we were off into the city. With the traffic, it took us a little more than an hour to get to our Manhattan hotel, but another one of our excellent guides, Hardy, kept us entertained with outstanding information about our drive and NYC in general. Even though Kathleen and I have been here numerous times before, I learned a lot. He would be our main guide for the week, and we are still (after two days) thrilled to have him.

We are staying at the Westin Times Square. It’s a very nice hotel, just about a block from Times Square. But Break-Away uses it because we can walk just about anywhere. Once we arrived and got settled in, we all met in the lobby to walk to a wonderful Italian restaurant, We walked right through Times Square to get there and Tony’s Di Napoli. This place is an institution and has been around since the fifties (just like us ?). They serve you a LOT OF ITALIAN FOOD, and they serve it family style. They bring it to your table on huge platters, and you pass it around. It was just like grandma used to make. Not gourmet, but delicious. Top that off with a nice Chianti and cannoli for dessert, and it was a perfect way to start the trip.

I only had two tiny quibbles about Tony’s. We were seated in a basement dining room, and the lighting for taking photos was terrible, as you will see in my photos. Thankfully, there are only a few of them. I know I could have taken them with my phone and gotten slightly better results, but I wanted the actual feel of the room. The other thing that was a pain was the noise. This may have been the nosiest restaurant I have ever been in. It was a legacy building, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were hard materials, which meant that with our party and about 50 other people down there, it was LOUD! You pretty much had to yell to be heard by the person sitting next to you, which only made the room EVEN LOUDER! But it was a delicious dinner, and no one left hungry for want of great food. It is almost sad how much we left on the serving platters. After dinner was over (around 10:30 NYC time), we took a short three-block walk back to the Westin and fell fast asleep.

Here are my photos of our the dinner at Tony’s. As you can see, it was kinda dark down there. Don’t forget, you can click them to enlarge them.

For our first time traveling with 41 people (we only had 21 in the vans—the rest had flown in early or arranged their own transportation to the airport), things were going very smoothly. More tomorrow about our first full day, which about killed us (in a good way). I should also mention that even though we regularly travel with two or four other people, traveling with 41 is really interesting in one big way. We know these folks from living in the same community, and we are all members of the Travel Club. But that doesn’t mean I know every name (because I am president and have a big mouth, they all know me ?). When we first moved into Trilogy, a neighbor who had known us before told us she had been on a Travel Club trip, and no one remembered her name to say good morning or good evening, or anything to her. I kind of vowed that this trip would not be that way for anyone. So I put together a PDF of photos of the entire group with names so I could remember who was who. Two days in, I am doing pretty well, and thankfully, Break-Away had some really great name tags for us, which really helps as well.

That’s it for day 1. Yesterday was our first full day, and I hope I get a chance to write it up tomorrow. I certainly took lots more photos as we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, had dinner at Sardi’s and saw an amazing Broadway show—Operation Mincemeat. See you then.

There’s nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.   —Sammy Davis, Jr.