Well, Steve and I decided to make another trip to New York City to the U.S. Open Tennis over the weekend. If you wonder why this is momentous, you can read about last year's experience here and the previous year's experience (with my friend Becky) here. Surely this year would be hassle-free.
It all started out well. We boarded our train in Lancaster and arrived in Penn Station in New York City three hours later. We had no problem finding the subway, purchasing our metro cards (we got two, one for each of us), swiping our cards at the turnstile, and boarding the E train headed for Jackson Height-Roosevelt Avenue where we would make our transfer to the 7 train. We watched all the stations go by and then when the subway screeched to a halt at Queens Plaza which was the one before Jackson, the announcement was made over the intercom that the next stop was something else, not Jackson Height-Roosevelt Avenue! Steve and I looked at each other a little concerned and I asked the woman sitting beside me, "is this train not going to Jackson Height-Roosevelt?" She explained to us that because it was a holiday weekend, the express subway was shut down for work on the tracks and the train we were on was the local train. It would still end up where we wanted it to, but it was just making a lot of other stops in between. We were quite relieved and Raquel was so friendly and helpful. She wondered where we were going and when we told her Flushing to our motel, she said that she lived in Flushing so we could just follow her through the transfer station when we needed to switch to the 7 train. We were very grateful for her concern for our welfare and accepted her offer. Whoever said that New Yorkers are not friendly?
We got to our motel without any more stress and the following morning navigated our way over to the tennis center without any problems at all. Our metro cards worked fine. We enjoyed the day and around 7:00 left the tennis to go back to our motel in Flushing. I swiped my metro card and went through the turnstile. Steve swiped his and the turnstile stayed locked. He tried again and again. After several tries, I said, "you might as well just go under. It's not like you haven't done it before." He squeezed through and nobody said anything or stopped us. It was deja vu all over again. We were irritated and angry but what were we supposed to do? We went back to our motel and tried to put it out of our mind and enjoy the rest of our evening.
We walked to a Chinese restaurant that we had eaten at before and liked. It's a little adventuresome ordering because you are not quite sure what you are getting but it was always good food when it arrived. I looked at the menu and saw something that looked like onion rings. The English translation was "calamari." I probably should have known what that was but I didn't. I also should have googled it but my phone was low on battery so I had turned it off. I figured whatever it was it would be good. The calamari came and looked yummy. I took a bite of one and it was awful. The fried outside part was okay but whatever was in the middle was chewy and had a taste that I didn't like. Steve was not impressed either. We left the huge bowl of them sitting, uneaten. The poor waiter came back when we were finished with our other food and pointed to the untouched calamari and said "box?" I shook my head no. In hindsight, I probably should have said yes and then just thrown them out in the nearest dumpster. He looked a little crestfallen that I didn't want to take them with me. After we got back to our motel, I plugged my phone in and looked up calamari and found out that they are squids. Obviously, some people like them but not me. I will chalk that up as a learning experience.
The next morning, we went to the booth in the subway and asked for $2.75 to be put on each of our metro cards. That would be enough to get us one more ride back to Penn Station. I swiped myself through without any problem, but again the turnstile stayed locked for Steve. We looked at each other in exasperation and said "not again." He tried one more time and low and behold it worked! He came through and we breathed a huge sigh of relief. I don't know what it is with Steve and metro cards but we were extremely thankful that that was the last time (on this trip), he would need to use one.
We arrived back in Lancaster County without any more mishaps and all in all it was a nice little vacation for us. Our travel experience was definitely better than the previous two years, but we learned that metro cards still don't like Steve and neither of us care for the taste of squid. Maybe next year we will go somewhere else and stay away from that busy place called New York City.
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