Saturday 15th December 2012

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[18:03 EST]

We are sitting here in the lounge waiting for the call to start boarding (about 25 minutes to go we think). Today was mainly spent clearing up, packing and wandering about Manhattan looking for these elusive red UGG slippers that Linda so desperately needed.

In the morning we'd popped down to the Tick-Tock diner at the bottom of the hotel to get our breakfast (the normal breakfast place is closed on a weekend) then it was straight back up to continue the packing we'd started the day before. Well, I say we... Linda had done all the packing whilst I'd helped by staying out of the way. We were all ready by 11am with our four bags and one rucksack (the other rucksack went into the check-in luggage). We took all the bags downstairs and checked them into the bag storage facility in the hotel so that we could get out for a couple of hours without having to take our cases with us. We jumped on the E train and headed up to 53rd Street to try and find this elusive pair of slippers. We finally found the UGG store on 58th & Maddison. It was one of the first times that I've had to queue to get into a retail store!

Fortunately, the queue didn't hold us up too long and we came away with the hard earned prize.

We then stopped off for a quick coffee at the Starbucks inside the Sony Centre on Madison. Then it was back onto the E train South to 34th Street. These trains must be quite new as they had a clever info display inside the trains telling you where they were heading.

On returning to street level we were stunned by seeing Santa. Well, not THE Santa, but a number of his clones. In fact they were everywhere.

We jumped into a cab with our reclaimed cases and headed to the airport, passing many, many more Santas. They were all part of a Santa parade that's held yearly apparently. There's more Santas in the slideshow below.

We were through security without any issue and settled down to a bite to eat and something to drink. I'll forget the nearly raw 'well done' burger, but the dessert was nice.

Flight's about to be called so time to pack up. See you back in Blighty!

[11:06 GMT+1]

The aircraft was 'Cosmic Girl' this time. We were all on board in plenty of time and the pilot announced that the flight time would be reduced due to the favourable tail winds pushing us on. Aside from two grizzling two-year olds a seat away, things looked good.