Now that I’ve finally gotten some sleep: we left for NYC at about 7:00pm on Saturday. We drove until about 1:00am and got a hotel in Ohio. We had to stop in Pennsylvania to pick up the dog the next day. We arrived at our hotel at about 8:30pm on Sunday. We drove around NYC for about 20 minutes trying to find out which parking garage we were supposed to go to. We stayed at Hotel Pennsylvania, it was um.. antique. The parking garage was about an 8 minute walk from the hotel and we had to make 2 trips to get our luggage, crate and the dog into our room. It had 18 floors and 12 elevators!
We got settled in then went to find out where to potty the dog, Pink. We went to the lower level of the hotel and were told we needed to pay $25 to potty the dog. We were pretty furious thinking it was going to be $25 every time. We found out it was a one time fee and calmed down a little lol. We then set off in search of some genuine New York pizza. It was almost 11:00 at that time and the pizza places were closed so we went to a little diner and had some supper.
The next morning (Monday) we had the whole day to walk around NYC. Our first stop was the ocean. One of the girls had never seen the ocean so we had to go! We then walked to the Museum of the Dog, very neat. After that we walked to Nintendo New York. We went back to the hotel to potty Pink then set off to the Museum of Sex. Weird, fun and a little interesting. They had a bouncy castle made of boobs lol. We walked around a little more and had supper, then finally got to bed around 2:00am.
On Tuesday we woke up around 6:00am and headed to the Westminster Dog Show via shuttle bus. Our ring time was 8:00am. Brandy showed Pink, they both did amazing. One of the girls and I left the show to go back to the hotel to check out. While we were walking in, we saw police officers running through the lobby and tackling a man. The man was screaming but and soo. There were at least 15 more officers there. It was wild to witness, it almost added to the New York experience.
No love for us in the ring, but we all agreed the experience was worth it! We were supposed to stay until 4:30 for benching hours but they let us all out at 3:15 “due to inclement weather”.
Leaving the show was an absolute nightmare. We were carrying a fold up chair, a collapsed 48” crate, 5 bags of stuff and had Pink. We waited in a 10x15foot outdoor tent for TWO HOURS. With about 50 other people and their dogs. It was absolute hell for those of us with social anxiety. The poor people with best of breed dogs were stuck with us as well, they got the first 3 shuttles to Madison Square Garden but they were all late. I think even the first 2 busses for BOB winners didn’t arrive until nearly 5:00, which is when they were supposed to be at The Gardens.
We finally got on to one of the first shuttles (after BOB). We met a very nice Canadian man that was determined to get these poor freezing girls home, he practically pushed us onto the bus. I wish I knew his name, he was so kind. We crammed onto the bus with lots of people, dogs and crates and finally made it back to the parking garage.
The weather was awful. We drove until 4:00 am to Ohio, where Pinks owner was kind enough to fix up the couches and let us sleep for 3 hours. We got some breakfast and made it home at about 3:00 pm.