USS John F Kennedy

I was having a lot of luck on this trip when it came to sitting on the “right” side of the aircraft or should I say the “correct” side as on most occasions the “right” side was in fact the left side.

This is a photograph of the USS John F Kennedy the last none nuclear aircraft carrier to be built in the US. Decommissioned in 2007 she now resides in the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility (NISMF) in Philadelphia. She is earmarked to become a museum but at 60,000 tonnes (lightweight) you are going to need a big display cabinet !!!

More details on this fascinating ship can be found at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_F._Kennedy_%28CV-67%29

I cannot identify the carrier next to it, answers on a postcard.....

Appalachian Mountains

On the way into Philadelphia from the West you fly over the Appalachian Mountains which when viewed from the aircraft I believe these might be the Piedmont range. The ridges make any East West road very difficult to build. The photograph is not good and the best views of the mountains were behind us by the time I remembered to take a photo DOH !!!

No expectations

It was one of those busy weeks, I had flown to the US for customer visits, I prefer to fly over on Saturday to comply with the "Saturday night stay" rule which reduces air fares on the Atlantic by up to £1000 in economy. I spent Sunday in Chicago before flying to Minneapolis for meetings on Monday, Tuesday was New York, Wednesday was rural Connecticut, Thursday was Atlanta and Friday was home to the UK. It was 6AM flights on Monday Tuesday and Friday with a late evening flight on Wednesday, I was not expecting any down time on this trip after Sunday.

I arrived into LaGuardia airport on lunchtime on Tuesday and the runway configuration and the side I was sat on gave me one of the most memorable views in the world.... Downtown Manhattan

When the weather is good it is an amazing view and as usual I thought that there would be no time to visit. After arrival I met a colleague and we went to out JFK hotel and then to the first meeting by 3PM. It turns out the customer had just resigned his position and was a little busy so we were out by 4PM wondering what to do with the evening. So we took the option of a 45 minute train ride downtown.

we spent a while wondering round an iconic city with buildings like the Empire State all lit up.

we then ended up in Times Square before finding a great Restaurant for a rib eye steak cooked the way only American can. The evening was fantastic and was made even more so as I had noexpectations of anything other than another than another airport hotel and indifferent burger in the sports bar. It is random unexpected evenings like this that make all the travel worthwhile