Ok NYC is noit in Europe, but hey....

While our daughter is on a school trip jet setting around Italy, Ben and I thought we would make a quick trip to New York. Yes I know the Koutas are not in Europe per Se but one of us is... If you want to follow Liv's adventures, you can at http://OliviaGracetravels.blogspot.com.au

So this morning when my beautiful, generous, loving sister Teresa dropped Ben and I at the airport and picked up our son Nicholas, we thought we had all the time in the world to enjoy a luxuriously long mediocre breakfast. After saying our goodbye's and going through to customs, I decided to look at the information printed on our boarding passes... WTF it was 10:15 and although we were told the flight was delayed by 20 minutes the scheduled departure time was 10:20 and we needed to be through customs by 9:50am! Panick set in and we were pulling all stops to jump the queue. We used every sob story known to man... From being delayed in saying goodbye to our 11 yr old son all the way to major tragedies were invented. The customs guy wished us the best of luck and laughed when he told us our gate was the furthest one away. Great. We ran all the way to gate 16 and for those of you not familiar with Melbourne international terminals or who have not traveled for a while, let me tell you it was miles away! Seriously, even with running on travellators, it was bloody hard work. When a Qantas air hostess with a walkie talkie met us mid way and radio'd in that they'd found mister and missus Koutoukidis, there was no 'phew, we can catch our breath now' and no stopping. It didn't matter that I did not have the fitness for that run, I had to suck it up and run for the love of God. I think I got my breath back somewhere over the ocean just before LA.

Change over was swift and efficient and we arrived in NYC  to a beautiful light snow storm. After settling into our room, we went down to the bar for a drink (or two) and some live porn thanks to a lovely Italian couple, the whole bar was watching on in anticipation of what was going to happen next, it got to stage where the bar tenders were taking bets on what's he going to grab next ? Boob, bum or the other thing it was like watching 2 octopus going at it Ahh to be young again. After the live show we then headed out from 6th Ave/30th to Times Square all the way up to 49th then back down to 14th/9th into Chelsea, Soho & Grenwich and back to the hotel. All the while it was snowing!

  

   Yes, we even did the Dallas BBQ re-run...

  We made a point to stay up until 1:30am which is 6:30am in Rome to wish Olivia a happy 15th birthday feeling blessed to be able to have these wonderful opportunities. One last night cap before we head up to our room.