New York and travel to Delaware

17th Feb

This morning we had an alarm at 0500 which thankfully didn't feel too early; we got ready and left the hotel at about 0545.

We walked the short distance to the studio arriving at 0600 where we were let in and allocated our letters.

We also had to sign a waiver 

We put our stuff in a locker and waited to be let in, we chatted to a few people who were all amused by our accents and the fact we had come to New York for our class.

We were both allocated a letter A which meant we got bikes in the front row.

We had the rules explained (basically don't chit chat through the class) and with about 10 mins to go Tunde arrived.

We were apparently the first arms and intervals class in the new studio and so we had to test out the arm movements to make sure they worked and we didn’t all knock each other out 

Then she asked where everyone was from and she was super excited when she heard we were from England.

She came and hugged both Rob and I. Then she wandered around talking to people until her team made her get back on the bike.

The class started off with a gentle warm up and then the hard work started. We had 18 minutes of arms and even with 2lb weights I was feeling it towards the end.

We had 3 shout outs from Tunde including in the pre and post shows. The class was hard work but good fun,

Rob and I both had milestones during the ride and we got a special 'badge' for riding in the studio.

Everyone was really friendly and we were surprised by how it wasn’t competitive in the room.

We had our photo taken with Tunde - who insisted we had one all together even though the rules say only 1 photo per group.

We got ourselves ready and ended up buying more merchandise before leaving!

We headed back to our hotel to shower and change then we needed some food. We ended up back at Wholefoods because we didn't find anywhere else we liked and I picked up a coffee on the way back.

I also saw this amazing car park along the way - I totally want to park here!

We packed our stuff and checked out after our brief visit. We got a car to the airport which was $100 inc tip.

We collected our car which turned out to be this beast:

We then headed off towards Wilmington, which took us about 3 hours including a brief stop for restrooms and a drink.

We arrived at Jen and Tom’s at just after 5pm and they were very impressed with the vehicle we had selected (not really!)

We decided to go and get pizza for dinner then we watched the All Star NBA game because Alex Toussaint (one of the Peloton instructors) was playing.

Oh and Jen and Tom left us these gift bags in our room which was super sweet.

New York for 1 day and a trip to Wilmington 😁 Travel day and arrival in New York

15th Feb

We were both working from home today, I had originally planned to finish at lunch but really wanted to get my ‘to-do’ list cleared.

In the end we worked until about 1500 when I dragged Rob away from his laptop having finished everything on my list!

We packed and sorted out a few bits and left the house at 1630. We dropped off 2 birthday cards (Feb is a big birthday month for us) along the way and then started off towards Heathrow.

At about 1830 we stopped at Fleet services to charge our car (costing 65p per kWh - which is so much more than at home!). 

We also got a gourmet meal at KFC, it was definitely half term as we were surrounded by families (most of which looked like they had been together for long enough!).

After about 45 mins we got back on the road and after another 25 mins we arrived at the Sofitel T5.

We headed into the terminal and did twilight check in. Bags dropped off we checked in at the hotel where we had been upgraded from a classic queen to a luxury king which was a birthday treat!

16th Feb

We had an alarm at 0530 and on our way out dropped off a few bits of washing at the car after check out.

Luckily security was quick despite the gates not working properly, Rob got through ok but for me and a whole bunch of people the scanner didn’t work. 

The staff seemed convinced we were all incapable of scanning but there were so many that it was obvious there was an issue!

We decided on breakfast at Giraffe, we were relaxed as we had plenty of time but we encountered lots of very panicky people who didn’t seem to have left enough time for a sit down breakfast - which don’t take long at the airport anyway 😂

We were at Gate B35 and boarded pretty much on time, finally departing at about 0845.

The flight was fine, I had the weird breakfast frittata but the rest of the tray was good. Rob just had the tray and was happy enough with that.

The aircraft got colder and colder along the way, still not understanding why BA want to chill us on every flight.

We both managed to sleep for a while and I’m sure we missed out on some snacks - maybe biscuits?

We were given a weird chicken pasty thing shortly before landing but it tasted fine, although it could have been a bit warmer.

We landed at 12 and sped through the airport and were leaving in an Uber at 1233 having done our global entry ‘interview’ on arrival. They seemed most baffled that Rob hadn’t been to any other countries in the past 5 years 🤣

We arrived at our hotel at about 1330 and our room was ready which was good, although it was much smaller than our room in the Sofitel. 

We paid with points and get $18 credit each for food / drinks plus we got a drinks voucher each as a birthday treat so not a bad deal overall!

We walked to the Peloton studio to check the walk for the morning, we decided to take a different route in the morning as one of our options didn’t look that great.

We also went to Wholefoods for some food, where we got some hot boxes and also some muffins for breakfast.

We ended up buying some studio merchandise which had 30% off but I don’t seem to have taken any photos 😎

It started raining so we headed back to the hotel to watch some TV, we managed to stay awake until about 8pm which given the early start we had coming up wasn’t too bad.