Traveling (Woes)

Thankfully, our flights to and from NYC were on time with no problems. However, finding our hotel was an adventure. We were staying at a Sheraton in Iselin, New Jersey.

We left NYC around 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon in the rain in the hands of our trusty-bus driver, Dave. (Despite what I'm about to tell you, he really was a great guy.) Around 6pm, we got in the vicinity of the hotel. Our tour guide had been instructed to call for directions, which she did. According to the first person she talked to, we had gone too far on the NJ Turnpike and needed to turn around and take exit 131A. We turned around. We took exit 131. We called back. Take 131A. We went to 131A. A Hilton, but no Sheraton. We pulled into a large cemetery to turn around. Imagine backing a tour bus from a narrow, barely one-lane cemetery drive onto a two-lane road at dusk in the rain. We used a student's iphone to access MapQuest, "no information available" was our response. We headed back to the NJ Turnpike, talking to the hotel, again. Thinking we had gone the wrong way when we exited, we attempted to go across the NJ Turnpike the other way. Oops. It just dumped us back on to the highway. We went up several exits and turned around. We went back to the area around the Hilton and called again. This time, someone stayed on the phone with us for 10 minutes while we were directed to the hotel. Once we got the hotel in our sights, it still took 10 minutes of looping around to make a left turn to get there. So, four hours later, we got off of the bus. It's like this Sheraton was in the Bermuda triangle of New Jersey.

Night two . . . we got lost again. Some gave the driver different directions. We were told to turn at the 4th light, turns out it was the 3rd light.

Night three. . . we made it to the hotel with no miss-turns on the FIRST try!

Beyond this inability to find the hotel, Dave was a great driver. He was patient with lolly-gagging students when double-parked in the city dropping us off. Whenever we were exhausted from walking around, Dave's big golden bus arrived like a chariot to offer rest to our weary feet and legs. Having someone drive us around in the chaos that is NYC traffic was fantastic.