As always there is one bad day during a vacation and that is the day you’ll need to go home. This is the same with this trip and that day was today. But before it is time to leave we wanted to do some things.

Danielle wanted to stay in bed a bit longer and I wanted to check out the biggest one-day-sale of this season at Macy’s. Because of this Macy’s opened one our earlier so I left our hotel at 8:20 to take the subway line M at 42 St/Bryant Park towards 34 St/Herald Sq. At 8:30 I walked through the door and I saw Christian, a salesman who helped us out earlier this week and told us to be here again on friday. He helped me finding the best prices and the right sizes. With 60% discount I left the men’s department and went to the women’s department. Is it bad if employees in the biggest store in the world recognize you from before? I guess it is.

During my last-minute shopping Danielle stayed in the room and packed the rest of our suitcases and answered my WhatsApp messages with pictures and prices. So I was sure I bought the right stuff and I made Danielle happy because I bought her a dress from Tommy with 50% discount! Shopping is fun, but shopping in the USA during a sale is even more fun.

When I arrived back in our hotel I asked Joe Joe to come up to our room to weigh our suitcases and they where roundabout exactly the weight which we could take with us, so we kept our fingers cross for the check-in at JFK. At 11:30 out town car arrived to bring us to the airport and only 45 minutes later we were waiting in line at the Lufthansa counter. And we were lucky since one suitcase was 24,2 kilo the other one was 23,6 kilo which is both a bit to heavy but I guess they liked my smile and we didn’t need to pay for the overweight.

After the security check we already found our plane ready at the gate but we needed another 2 hours before we would be allowed on board for the flight back home. Unfortunately we had some delay because a couple of passengers were still at the security check at our original take-off time. After waiting for more than an hour we finally went up in the air and there was the big surprise, FlyNet was already available in this plane although there were no signs in the plane yet. FlyNet is the inflight wireless internet system from Lufthansa which costs € 19,95 for up to 24 hours access. So after thinking, actually I didn’t really thought, I bought access.

First I was just reading a bit but, than I saw Yves was online in the Facebook chat so we started chatting, we send some pictures until we came to the idea to make a FaceTime call. We bought expected it didn’t work due to limited bandwidth, high latency but it worked perfect. I walked with an iPad Mini through the plane to show the stewardesses, the alcohol, the other passengers and a nice view on the clouds. I got some strange looks probably because people thought I was talking to myself?

After this inflight highlight we had rice, vegetables and chicken as a meal. The flight went well I actually got bit of sleep and although we had an hour delay we arrived 40 minutes early in Frankfurt. Danielle always wanted to go to Frankfurt but I always told her there is no fun there… And now she agrees because after 30 minutes of wandering, 2 elevator rides and 4 escalator rides we finally made it to our destination the gate! We got something to eat and after about one hour waiting we could board the last plane of this trip, the Boeing 737-300 was for 2/3 empty. After a short flight without a snack or beverage we landed on time in Nürnberg.

In Nürnberg we took the last hurdle of the trip, we needed to go through customs but all went well they questioned about every 3rd passenger walking through customs but we got through without any questions asked. We walked to our car and drove straight to our local Lidl to do some grocery shopping. It felt a bit disappointing to shop at the Lidl only 17,5 hours after I was shopping at the world largest store.

So comes an end to this fantastic trip, I hope you all enjoyed reading the blog at least as much as did writing it. I know Danielle enjoyed her combined anniversary & birthday trip a lot and she’ll never know or I’m ever going to surprise her like this.

We had no plans for today but in the end we’ve done a ton of things after we had a lazy morning. At 10 o’clock we left the hotel walked to the subway station at 47-50 Sts/Rockefeller Ctr from where we took the subway line M towards 5 Av/53 St. After exiting the station it was raining but we were close to our goal, the Museum of Modern Art at 53 Street.

At the museum we watched at all the floors and the most interesting items where from Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh and a big part of the contemporary section. Furthermore art museums is not our kind of museum to see and we guess that it was also a bit to crowded, probably because of the weather forecast. After we left the museum we wanted to visit the ‘Rain Room’ a room where it’s not raining when someone stands there. But when we learned that the wait was over 3 hours we decided to do something else.

We walked from there towards the Shops at Columbia Circle at the corner of 8th Avenue and 59th street. The shops were nice and it wasn’t crowded but we didn’t came for shopping, did that surprise you? We came to lunch at Porter House, they had a 3-course Park View lunch for only $25 which included a mushroom soup, a petite filet mignon and a NY cheesecake combined with a nice wine. It was delicious and the price was right. After lunch we went out and took the subway line C at the 59 St/Columbus Circle to get to 14 St.

At 14 St we walked to Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market could be described as a huge food mall with a lot of sweet food. You’ll find lobster, doughnuts, cookies, sushi, freshly brewed beer and more in a very good-looking building. And although we had eaten enough we both got appetite and went for a cupcake at Ruthy’s Bakery which is specialized in 3D baking. Danielle ate Cookie Monster and I went for Big Bird.

Since the weather was still nice we wanted to walk outside and we were near to Highline park so we decided to walk uptown through this park. Highline park is a long park build on top of a former elevated rail line which has a very nice design and gives some nice views at Manhattan.

After we walked from 14th Street uptown to 30th street we walked towards 34 St/Penn Station where we took the subway line C towards 42 St/Port Authority Bus Terminal from where we walked to our hotel over times Square.

In the hotel we partially packed our suitcases and we are still below the maximum weight. We also made a reservation for transportation to the airport for tomorrow since it might be raining and when it rains it’s difficult to get a taxi.

for the evening we had an appointment with Glenn, unfortunately Gina wasn’t able to come since she was ill, but we had still fun at the Irish pub near our hotel. It came to our mind that we’ve seen Glenn on every single US Vacation we’ve had, we’ve seen wedding photos from last year, we ate a burger, drank Irish beer, had a laugh and at about 11 o’clock it was time to say goodbye because we fly back home tomorrow.