I woke up and immediately looked online to track Mum and Paul's flight. They were 2 and a half hours away from landing in the USA. At 10.30am Jackie (Gwen's mom) drove me to the train station and I took the 10.52am train from Katonah to Grand Central Station. I was due to arrive at Grand Central just after midday. Their flight landed early at 10.45am, but they had to go through immigration, wait to collect their bags and get into Midtown Manhattan from JFK airport so I thought I had plenty of time to beat them to their hotel to surprise them! They thought that I was coming to meet them Friday lunchtime or Friday evening, so I was a whole day earlier than they thought. I had made them a welcome sign and couldn't wait to surprise them! On the train and I was still half an hour away and they had got into a taxi and started speeding down the highway on their way to the city which would take them about half an hour too with no traffic, (I was tracking them on FindMyFriends). They were going fast and all of a sudden I was worried that I might not beat them to their hotel... When I arrived at Grand Central Station I was only 3 blocks or so away from their hotel and I tracked them to see where they were and they were literally 1 block away from Grand Central Station - they were right on my tail!!! I ran out of the station (struggling to carry lots of bags) and towards their hotel, worried that I was standing out like a sore thumb and they might recognise me if they drove past me! I started to record the whole event via Facebook Live (go and look at my facebook page if you want to see it!) and luckily I had beaten them to the hotel event if it was only 5 minutes! They came in a back door instead of the main front door but luckily I saw them at the check in desk and they hadn't seen me. I ran up to them with the sign (still recording) and surprised them! I can easily say they were happily surprised!!! We dropped off all our luggage and then went to TGI's for lunch. It was really delicious! I had chicken and shrimp spicy Cajun pasta. It is so strange how everything went straight to normal as if we had never been apart! Then we walked around Times Square and then walked to the Empire State Building. We went up in the late afternoon so we got to see the skyline in the daylight, see the sunset and then also see the skyline at night with all the lights. It is magical up there. But it was so, so cold!!! Then we went back to the hotel and enjoyed a snack of sliders and a cheese board and I had a cocktail to drink. They had been up for nearly 24 hours so they had done well to still be awake. The time reached about 9.30pm and they were both falling asleep in the bar so we went up to the room to bed - I was so tired too and I had only done normal day! But what a day!
