09-30 to 10-3-2022: Our Next Adventure

On September 30, Christine and I started our next adventure. First, we attended a wedding for a first cousin once removed. Chelsea Malone. We rented a car and drove to the Basilica Regina Pacis in Brooklyn, NY for the wedding, which was a beautiful ceremony.

Then we drove to Staten Island and checked into the Hampton Inn. The wedding reception was at a country club on Staten Island and so we changed clothes and attended the reception. It was a spectacular affair and everyone had a great time. The only downside was that the live band played so loudly that it was impossible to talk to anyone. You had to put your mouth close to someone’s ear and shout to be heard. Everyone ended up with sore throats from shouting. But the dancing was great and clearly the bride had the best time. I think she was on the dance floor nearly the whole evening. I’m not so sure the groom was as much into dancing, but he was a good sport and got out there some.

October 1 we laid low in the hotel. The weather was miserable, rainy and quite chilly. There was a break in the weather in afternoon so we walked around the area. We discovered a nice area around the next hotel that obviously is used as a venue for weddings and other events. It was a pretty area. But mostly the area is an industrial park, large parking lots, office buildings and medical offices. And surprisingly, there was a chocolate manufacturing building, The World of Chocolate. And even more surprisingly, we saw a buck deer right along the edge of the parking lot.

October 2 we met up with another of Christine’s cousins, first cousin once removed, originally from Australia, but is now living in Queens. Several times we have met up with Zac when we go to New York for Christine’s annual appointment related to her aneurysm. We met Zac and his boyfriend Vincent at a great Italian restaurant right on the waterfront. Unfortunately, the weather continued to be awful so the scenery was not as wonderful as it might have been. We had a nice lunch (with leftovers for dinner!) with Zac and Vincent. We dropped them off nearby at a brewery, which we passed on visiting, and returned to the hotel.

October 3 was a big travel day. We’re off to Israel! We had a few hours before we had to dump the car off at Newark Airport. First we packed up our fancy clothes and shoes and UPSed them home. We didn’t want to take up luggage space with the extra clothing. We stopped at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanic Garden, but the rain kept us in the car eating our lunch. Then we went back to the eastern side of Staten Island and looked at the view of Manhattan. Again, with the rainy, chilly day we didn’t see much. Someone was feeding the seagulls and so we had quite the closeup view of the birds. You don’t really realize how large seagulls are with very large wingspans. We then drove along the river to find a B&B we have stayed at a few times. It’s an increasingly tired place, but we did have some nice stays there in the past.

Then it was off to Newark Airport. It was a bit of a struggle to find a gas station. In the future, I’ll buy the fuel package when renting a car because it was a total pain to have to find a gas station with all the traffic and insanity of commuting around a major city. But we did it and found our way to the drop off place for the car. Thank goodness for GPS! We call our phone mapping GPS Gigi (I don’t know why; I think we got that from my Dad, who called his GPS Gigi), so Gigi got us where we needed to go.

At about 6:30 pm we boarded our direct flight from Newark to Tel Aviv, a 10-hour flight. We were delayed a bit for departure, which we were a little nervous about. We were arriving in Israel at 12:35 on October 4, the day before Yom Kippur. We were told that the Tel Aviv airport was closing at 4:00 p.m. and that driving was curtailed at that time, in preparation for the holiday, so we didn’t want to inconvenience our hosts. But it all worked out, except for some anxiety about our luggage. Now we can start our wonderful adventure in Israel.