Final day

Daytime view from my room

I left my bags at the hotel, as my flight tonight leaves at 11.20pm, so there is no need to make it to the airport until fairly late.

Sadly, the Classified restaurant has been closed and the normal United Polaris lounge has been expanded to take over that space.  That's a shame, because it was always a quiet place to sit and wait for your flight, although it will make dinner an awful lot cheaper - as it should be free, but we'll see!

As I was only in the room for two nights, I hadn't actually seen this view with nice weather.  You can just about see the bay in the distance.  This is looking south over Manhattan. 

I decided to visit Rockaway Beach, which is on the south-east limit of New York's borough of Queens.  I was able to get on an 'A' train which took me there.

I've been here before, but I still like the way that the train trundles slowly over the subway bridge, crossing the large lagoon.  It's not elevated much, so it feels like you're going along the water.

Apparently, parts of the bridge can be opened to permit ships to pass through, and one had wanted to pass through today, so there were quite a few delays on the line.

Just before the beach, the line splits into two, with the 'A' going east and a shuttle 'S' going west.  I went east to 44th St, walked back westwards to 98th St and got the shuttle back to the junctiona and then an 'A' back to Penn Station.

There are a lot of breakwaters like this all along the beach.

They all featured a few signs saying "Keep Off Jetty"  but there were still some people poj each one.  Usually, it would be people fishing, but at one, there was a whole group of children on the rocks.

You can just ahout see Manhattan in the distance  looking westwards along the beach.

It wasn't very long ago that I was able to paddle in the Pacific Ocean and now was able to do the same in the Atlantic Ocean.

By the time I had decided to return back to Manhattan, schools had finished for the day, so the shuttle train back to Broad Channel was packed with a schoolchildren.

 

Since the signage at Penn Station is terrible, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly which entrance and where I would have to go with all my luggage later on.

Having done that, I decided to eat at a steakhouse, which was very expensive, but the food was nice.  The restaurant is part of the whole stack of venues in the same place.  There's Penn Station at the bottom, underground, with another level of restaurants and entrances for the station on the "ground floor", with Madison Square Garden arena on top of it all.

I had the slab bacon to start, which was large cube shapes of gammon, with maple syrup sauce.  My server suggested black pepper improved the taste too, and I think it did too.  The filet mignon was the most expensive part, but was done as it should have been.  I just had a cookie and coffee for dessert and they came to $15 in total as well.