A JUMBO DRAMA IN NEW YORK.

Continued from last post.

It was 1970 and we left our motel for LA airport early. We swapped our QANTAS tickets for TWA tickets to New York because we wanted to fly on the new Jumbo Jet and QANTAS didn't have any then. Unfortunately, that was not a good move. The plane was scheduled to leave at 12 noon, however, it was delayed for over two hours due to 'technical problems'. That gave me the heebie jeebies. Finally, we took off but had to fly further south than usual to avoid a storm so that delayed us further. It was late at night when we arrived in NY and then our luggage didn't turn up. We had to wait another two hours. We rang the hotel to say we were delayed. They told us they had given our room away because we hadn't arrived before five o'clock. After a heated exchange they found us another room. Luckily, our luggage arrived and we took a taxi to the hotel. We weren't impressed. It was late at night. The service was non existent. There was no lift we had to climb stairs with luggage to third floor. There was no dining room we had to find a restaurant in what seemed a dark and seedy area. When our eyes adjusted to the dim lights and smoke filled cafe we noticed that we were the only whites. By the time we crawled into a not so comfortable bed all tired and frazzled, we were not impressed with New York. In the morning we decided to return to the airport and fly to Toronto. ( A decision I regretted for the next 40 years until we did visit NY again and thoroughly enjoyed it.)

  My cousin Molly, Aunt Ada  and children Stewart and Fiona met us at the airport. 

The next day Molly drove us up north to the lakes district. We stayed in a friend's cabin. The children went swimming but it was too cold for us. Once again my relatives, whom I hadn't seen since a small child in England, were very kind to us.

One of Molly's friends lent us his big Oldsmobile to drive to Niagara Falls because there were six of us, too many for Molly's little car. His only stipulation was that Bill was to drive. Bill was overjoyed to get behind the wheel of this beaut car but he had to remember to drive on the right hand side of the road, not what we were used to.

Fiona, me, Aunty Ada, Molly and Stewart at Niagara Falls.

 We walked behind the wall of water thundering down in front of us. We had to dress in black waterproof ponchos. We all looked like penguins.

 We all went up the Skylon Tower to have lunch at the revolving restaurant. The lift was on the outside of the tower. It took your breath away.

Molly took us for a tour of the city. They were very proud of their new City Hall. 

That night we flew to London. The plane was empty and we could lie down and sleep most of the way. We took a taxi from the airport in London to the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square. In the afternoon we went to Regent St. to pick up our car that we had bought in PNG to be picked up here. After some messing about we were given the keys, as I sat in the car and pulled the door shut the door handle fell off into my hand. (Not a good start). We waited for it to be fixed and then took off into the hair raising London traffic  and for the first few hundred yards on the wrong side of the road. Bill still thought he was in Canada.

This is like the Ford Capri that we took delivery of in London except ours was two toned blue.
The next morning we found our way out of London and headed for Dover. Bill was getting excited at the thought of seeing his parents again and introducing me. We intended coming back to London later with his parents.