The fairly regular trip to Delaware, with a side of New York City! Day 1 NYC!

Wednesday 19th March

This morning we had a relaxed start, with pastries and drinks from downstairs – this was mainly because the Hilton has an annoying ‘resort credit’.

You get charged $35 per day and then get a $35 per day food credit (and a $25 laundry credit) but the little café has some expensive prices! I was determined to use the credit though (and we knew about it in advance so it wasn’t a problem.)

We then walked to Hudson’s Yard to visit The Edge, which took us about 36 minutes to do the distance.

We had deliberately waited to book our tickets until we knew the weather forecast and we booked a flexible ticket so that we weren’t fixed to a particular timeslot.

We enjoyed the view and we got some nice photos, although I did not enjoy the glass floor. I don’t mind heights but I find the glass floors very uncomfortable!

We decided to get lunch from Shake Shack in Hudson’s Yard and then we had a little look around the shops, including Uniqlo where Rob got himself some colourful socks.

We walked around to look at The Vessel but didn’t pay to go ‘in’ and then we took a quick look at the Highline before walking towards Central Park.

We arrived in the park at about 1520 and we walked up to around 90th Street over a couple of hours.

The weather was fab, bright and sunny and we got some nice photos of the park, we hadn’t managed to walk this far in on previous visits as it had always been too cold.

We popped back to the hotel and decided on dinner at PizzArte which is about 1 street from the hotel.

We were provided some complimentary bread and olive oil to start.

Then I had a mocktail and a pasta dish, Rob obviously had pizza (I tried a little bit and it was very nice) and I think he had some form of beer/lager.

We obviously had to have desserts  I had tiramisu and Rob had the flourless chocolate cake.

Total cost including tip was $115.

The fairly regular trip to Delaware, with a side of New York City! Day 4 - Wilmington to NYC

Tuesday 18th March

We got up and ready and packed our things. Jennifer had to go to the office so she left early, Tom worked from home and we said goodbye before we left.

We headed towards New York and had a smooth drive, much less traffic than on the way on Friday (not really a surprise).

We did head towards Coney Island but it didn’t look very ‘open’ so we took the car back to the airport a bit earlier than planned. We filled up with gas along the way.

We were going to get an uber from Jamaica but it was $160 so we got the air train back to the terminal and took a cab. Total cost including tip was $100.

We know we could have gone via the air train to the subway etc but we tried that before and frankly it’s just too much hard work!

The journey was reasonably quick and we arrived at the hotel at about 1400, we checked in and were allocated a room on the 7th floor.

With hindsight we should have asked for a different room even if we had to wait the extra hour to ‘normal check-in time’ as our room was right next to the elevator and we could hear it during the night (more of a problem for Rob who is a light sleeper.)

We headed out for a wander around leading us to Rockefeller where we got Potbelly sandwiches. We managed to find some high top tables inside where we could watch the ice skating at the same time.

We also stopped off at Puma, Nike, Lego and a few other stores before we came back to the hotel for a rest and ended up staying in for the evening.

We watched some HGTV in the room for the evening 

The fairly regular trip to Delaware, with a side of New York City! Day 3 - Wilmington

Monday 17th March

This morning we had some coffee and toast before subjecting poor Tom to more shopping at the Christiana Mall.

We arrived slightly earlier than normal and so we couldn’t enter via our normal department store as it wasn’t open!

We were all slightly uncomfortable entering via one of the actual mall entrances…!

We had a walk around and it was reasonably quiet.

We went to Uniqlo where Rob got himself some jeans and we were baffled by their self-service checkouts.

You just put the items in the box and somehow it “knows” what items are in there – I know someone will be along to tell me it’s done by RFID tags or something but I prefer my theory that it is magic!

We also went to Lego where disappointingly they didn’t have the new Dinosaur set which Tom wanted.
Rob did get the new Nigel Mansell F1 car though which was good.

We also made our traditional visits to Apple and some sunglass shops but no items were purchased.

We headed towards the big stores and started off with lunch at Jersey Mikes before making our traditional visit to the Container Store.

Rob wanted to visit Best Buy again so we sent him and Tom over there while Jennifer and I went to Athleta. I was very restrained as they had a cute dress but I concluded I didn’t need it as I have so many dresses and we rarely have nice enough weather to wear them!

We got home and Tom made me a door stop on his 3d printer – Rob obviously watched and now wants to buy one!

Jennifer and I watched some HGTV I think - based on these photos of me and the cats 

For our final night we had dinner at Iron Hill Brewery where Jennifer had salad, Rob had sausage and mash.

Tom had this dish which I cannot remember what it was:

And I had a burger 

Oh and 3 of us had one of these – I didn’t take 3 photos cos that would be weird!

Back home to Jennifer and Tom’s before we leave in the morning