The Intertwined Life: Serving, Working, Creating: Travel Day 1 (cont’d): Raleigh to New York – Connecticut

When we left off last, Addison and I were flying from Raleigh, NC to New York. After I put up my lap top, Addison points out that we are flying over the Statue of Liberty. That was cool!

We offload, grab our bags and head over to call the rental car place to get a shuttle. BAM it’s there in less than 5 minutes. On the short shuttle ride from the airport to the rental car place (to be named AFTER our vacation for privacy reasons) I realized that my reservation was for the location at JFK not La Guardia … uh oh. We make our way through the line and our hearts have sunk a bit hearing them announce that they are only dealing with online reservations as they are sold out of cars. GULP. There are three people (2 women and a man) working the counter and they are booking it. The man seems to be the friendliest of the group and Addison and I are individually praying that the man helps us … he does. Then he realizes that he can’t find my reservation since I’m basically at the wrong location. We start chatting with him, asking him pretty please … he gets us in a car. Whew, again. We get in our little Ford Focus, hook up the GPS, get out the map (just in case) and off we go. No issues driving and getting out of NY. I was quite taken aback when we went over the bridge and the toll was $5.50!!

We drove to New Haven, CT and got off the highway to check out Yale (I mean, really, after all of those years watching The Gilmore Girls…). I had the address saved in the GPS and we drove around for 30 minutes and as much as it saddens me to admit … we couldn’t find Yale! We were in the ‘hood. It was not good. I swear we saw a prostitute going out for work as we were high-tailing it out of that area. By this time we have major headaches and are starving so we decide to shelve the Yale plans until later – off we head to Rhode Island. We finally find this little diner and stop for a bite, poor Addison, she is so tired and so hungry at this point she’s almost comatose. We eat and jump back in the car.

Along the way we keep seeing McDonald's EVERYWHERE. Then we start seeing them right across the highway from each other ... crazy looking, it's like the war of the arches:

We find our hotel (outside of Newport – again, name withheld until after we leave this location). I was happy to find that the hotel was nice and quiet. Free Wi-Fi. Free breakfast. And our room is a really good size.