Our trip to NYC was the first vacation My Darling B and I have taken together since March 2020. Yeah, it’s been a while.

When Barb booked our flight to NYC, she managed to snag us a couple seats in the first class section of the plane for less than the cost of seats in coach with extra leg room. Full disclosure: It wasn’t called “first class,” it was called something like “premier seating,” probably because they don’t want two bumpkins from Wisconsin to get big heads about it. The seats were wide, there was leg room all the way into next week, the flight attendant offered to hang up my coat, and she brought us free drinks!

We customarily toast the beginning and ending of our vacations with a Bloody Mary, and our flight departed so early in the morning that the airport bar wasn’t open, so we took her up on her offer. It wasn’t the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had but it preserved the tradition.