Road Trip!

I have received feedback from my family about posting my blogs about our October road-trip in the wrong order. I will therefore start at the beginning:

Saturday 28^th October

Flew from Heathrow to JFK, New York. We were using airmiles, and as it was a treat, we were in the business section. This was comfortable but fairly boring, as everyone else seemed to be working (hence ‘business section’ I guess). I have no idea who the man in the photo is, my selfies often have random people in them.

  We picked up the hire car (not the one we had actually ordered—are they ever the same?) and drove to Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey. We used to live in New Jersey, when my children were small, and we planned to spend the first few days visiting old friends, looking at places we remembered and generally being nostalgic.

I should tell you first about breakfast. We ate in a diner. Diners are one of the best things about America. They are generally privately owned, and they have booths, and endless coffee refills, and food which is amazingly delicious and arrives in super-huge portions. The service is always friendly and efficient in a sort of laid-back, we have all day, sort of way. There is often a bar, where a group of ‘regulars’ sit each morning, eating their breakfast and chatting, and the waitress knows everyone by name and what their order will be. There is an overhead television, with the sound turned off, showing the news of the day.

We were still on vaguely UK time, so we arrived at The Ridge Diner at about 6:00 am (many diners are open 24 hours). We sat there, in a booth, feeling like we had properly arrived, we were back in the US. I ate banana and pecan pancakes, which arrived with a side of creamed butter and maple syrup. Husband ordered corned beef hash, fried potatoes and eggs. You could have fed a whole family in England with what arrived. It was perfect.

   Another stop was to Ramsey TJ Maxx. This is a shop I visited lots when we lived there, as it was a good place to buy clothes for the children who shared my dislike of shopping and who were not, it should be said, the best-behaved children in the world when it came to shops. In fact, it reminded me of the time when the boys discovered that if they went to Customer Services and said they were lost, it would be announced over the tannoy, and they took great pleasure in hearing: ‘Could the mother of Emm and Jay please go to the service desk. . .’ We would be in a shop, I would look at a product for one second, glance down, and they would be gone. I would sigh with resignation and shut my eyes, waiting for the announcement: ‘Would the mother of. . .’ You get the picture.

Anyhow, this visit was stress-free, and I replaced my ski-jacket, which I had bought there 22 years earlier and the zipper has now broken. (It had a good innings!)

   We also had a quick look, for old-time’s sake, at ShopRite in Ramsey, where I did the weekly shop. They used to have tiny shopping trolleys for the children to push (you can imagine how that went—an idea from someone who did not have children! The shop was full of children filling trolleys with stuff they fancied, or racing up the aisles and bumping into things). They now have much more sensible child trolleys, where they sit in a pretend car in the front of an adult-controlled trolley.

Ah, lots of happy memories.

We visited friends, and went back to look at our old house, and ate way too much food. Then we set off, Pennsylvania next stop. I will tell you about it in my next blog.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a happy day.

Take care.

Love, Anne x

We spent October on a road trip, driving through the Eastern States of America. We had a fabulous time!
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