Well, we made it.
I imagine that I will wake up about 4am tomorrow and come to you with a more coherent report, but for now, let’s do this.
Coming to you from the back yard – ‘scuse me – garden – of a guest house in Oxford, drinking a bit of calming lager from my new Hadestown cup – after a rather strenuous cycle of travel. But at least we got here, which is probably more than what most of the hundreds of folks I saw stranded in JFK last night (Thursday) have experienced.

Quick, super quick recap:
- Wednesday: Hadestown with the kid who hadn’t seen it, while the kid who had (back in 2020, on our last NYC trip) wandered the city on his own. Before that, we sampled dumplings in Chinatown, and then after, had a late night dinner with the oldest at Raoul’s.
Also wandered by the Ghostbuster’s station – and found out it’s still a working fire station!

- Thursday morning: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had never actually been to the Statue of Liberty, since most of our NYC traveling has taken place a) in the wake of 9/11 or b) in the winter and also at times when tickets to get to the statue were such that you had to book them a long time in advance. I realized that this time, took a shot at it, got tickets a week before. We’d done Ellis Island, but a long time ago.
- Quick lunch for the guys at Underground Pizza, near our hotel. Cheaper than Raoul’s, for sure!








I found this very interesting – at Ellis Island, a display of samples of literacy tests given to immigrants. Not in English, but in their own language – and the passages are all Bible verses.
- Then grab our luggage from storage at the hotel (the very nice Wall Street Inn), subway over to Brooklyn, where we met Ann Engelhart at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. She and I wandered and talked, the guys wandered, and then she kindly took us to JFK, where…..
- Oh. What a mess that was. Our flight was delayed for reasons not too-related to the general mess, and I felt for all the people caught in the general mess. There had been some weather earlier that had messed up flights, a lot were cancelled, and the rebook line in Terminal 3 was hundreds of people long. It was insane.
- Our flight was due to take off at 10, and everything looked fine…but then there was no plane at the gate. We were assured that the plane was around, cleaned and catered, but it was just…not here. The crew came and went down the jetbridge. No plane. After an hour, the captain came up and talked on the phone for a while. All I could catch was “They said it was coming…it’s not here…” He got off and then spoke to us, saying that yes, the plane was ready to go, but it was on the other side of the airport and because of traffic congestion, it was taking a while to get it to us. Obviously. Etc, etc. Well at least, for once, someone who actually had some involvement with what was going on and had some authority was speaking to passengers, rather than leaving us in the dark of repeated delays and promises that we’d soon be on our way, blah, blah.
- So as I said, our schedule had as leaving at 10pm. We finally got off the ground around 1am.
Maybe thanks to these guys’ prayers!

- I was very tired and thought for sure I’d sleep…but I didn’t. Not much anyway. I didn’t eat – couldn’t believe they were still insisting on serving “dinner” rather than just cutting the lights and letting us be. I peaked at my son’s from under my eyeshade and it looked pretty sad – austerity shows – a bit of ravioli, a little salad and a cookie.
- We landed, found the bus, rode the bus and here we are in Oxford!
Overheard conversation of the trip so far, by my son as he was wandering in NYC:
One laborer, talking to others, pointing to a sign for a particular construction company, saying in an accent:
“That company? 90% Albanian!”
Then to another sign:
“That one? 95% Albanian!”
One more:
“That one – 99% Albanian!”
Update: As I said, I started this Friday night, then got tired. I did, indeed, wake up at 3:30 am, and felt good, but told myself I really needed to try to get more sleep – which I did, amazingly. So here I am, waiting for the guys, so we can go have our first Full English, then see Oxford!
From yesterday, our initial wandering. First meal – our favorite from our London trip: Nando’s – very good, healthy and dependable:





