Seems like everyone is asking that question since we hit the 1 year anniversary of Covid hitting the fan. For a few months prior to it taking over everything, my wife and I had planned a trip to NY City. Every few days we’d hear more and more in the news about it, but it was isolated in upstate NY, so no biggie.
Covid was making a few more headlines just the day before we were set to leave. What should we do–stay home or go? Assessing all the info we had at the time, we had no worries about actually getting it, so full steam ahead. We landed, traveled into the city, got some rest to hit the town the next day and enjoyed day 1 of our trip…
Then it all hit the fan.
I was standing in line waiting to get a plastic fork from the front desk of the hotel when it flashed on the screen: NBA SUSPENDS SEASON. Whoa, that’s pretty big. Then more sports and entertainment dominos fell–especially in NYC. Restaurants, tourist sites, Broadway–early closures, cancellations and straight up locked down, lights out. Overnight it seemed my wife and I went from 2 of thousands on the streets of NYC to 2 of a few dozen you’d see out and about. The next few days were more of the same. Never thought we’d be the only 2 people having lunch in a restaurant in mid-town Manhattan on a Tuesday afternoon. That’s how quiet it got.
At this point we’d have to double check all the places we wanted to go ahead of time, just to make sure they’d be open at all. At this point our biggest worry was the subway. If it were to shut down, then we’re pretty much stuck unless we want to Uber all over town. Kind of weird to walk onto a subway in the middle of the afternoon and have pretty much any seat you want! The craziest thing we saw was still to come that night.
Our hotel was just a few blocks from the local grocery store. We had popped in a few times to get snacks, sandwiches etc. Trust me, the Times Square McDonald’s does NOT have a dollar menu. As we walked in about 7pm to grab a few things, we realized EVERYONE in the neighborhood was there! They were there and stocking up like the snow-pocalypse was coming, but this time nobody was really sure what was coming. That’s when we thought we may have to cut this trip short.
The next day we were able to hit the Statue Of Liberty (before they closed early of course) and had a nice dinner where we experienced ‘social distancing’ for the first time. They weren’t publicizing it or making mention of it, but we noticed we were all around 6 ft apart. This is getting weird. Not sure if traveling by air was the next thing to get shut down, we thought it best to cut the trip short and get home.
Little did I know I should’ve hoarded some toilet paper from the plane when we landed.