We had to leave behind the Upper West Side and our little French bakery today 😢 We are all quite sad about our time in NYC coming to an end, although the girls say what helps them overcome their sadness is the next stop of Disneyland, and what helps me overcome my sadness is…..the fact our next accommodation has a guest laundry!! 🥳

Our driver was waiting for us as we checked out, and took us through the Lincoln tunnel and into New Jersey to reach the Newark Liberty airport. Check-in and security went well considering we had no idea what we were doing and the airport is full of people. We had a couple of hours waiting at our gate before departure, during which time we sorted and shared the hundreds of photos we took in New York.

My reflections of New York: not long enough! Although I recognise we always had a very ambitious schedule which we were never going to fully complete, and I feel we did well with what we fit in. I loved where we stayed, and the fact it is walking distance to Central Park (which I love and could visit very regularly if I lived there), but I think next time I would actually spend half a week each in two locations – down in the Financial District to easily access Brooklyn, DUMBO and the Statue of Liberty and see some shows, and then Upper West Side again to explore from Columbus Circle on up.

Of course my thinking is biased by the fact that the week we were there was summer break, so no shows were on at Carnegie Hall or around the Lincoln Centre, shows that we definitely would have considered given Abi’s future career if we could have.

We also missed two things in particular because opening hours changed in the months between my initial planning and our arrival, and I didn’t double check. I had written down to visit the National Jazz Museum in Harlem on the weekend, forgetting it was closed on Sundays, and I had intended to do a free tour of the NY Public Library at 2pm on Sunday, but over the summer it is closed for renovations. Both were my stuff up though.

But we are so thankful for everything we have seen and done, and for good health and legs that kept going! The weather was fantastic – it rained on our last night there but never affected our plans – and we felt very safe. Being a harbour city, the mayor is taking in refugees from other states and putting them up in hotels, which has some tourists complaining online, but we didn’t see any of that, and I think it is only happening around Times Square. The main guests at our hotel were airline crews. I had read online that the city smells of weed everywhere because now it is legal there the locals smoke it constantly on every street corner. While that was true in some places, it didn’t bother us, we just really noticed it as we would cross the odd road.

We had another uneventful flight to LAX, and caught a shuttle to our accommodation at Anaheim (after Abi and Belle recognised a celebrity and bravely asked for a photo with him!). We checked in and then…..DID LAUNDRY!!!!!! We are actually staying literally next door to the hotel we stayed in 10 years ago, so we wandered over there to reminisce while the washing was on, and had a milkshake at the Cold Rock as we were not fed on the 5 hour flight.

Waiting for the dryer load to finish, I had a little siesta, so the girls went and collected it and brought it all back to the room to fold. Then we went over to Downtown Disney to explore and had dinner at Tortilla Joe’s (one Mexican caesar salad between the three of us because the meals are so big!). Belle is beside herself with excitement and very much looking forward to tomorrow!!