By this time I had hoped I would have already done three runs around New York City, but alas I had only done two and my last one had been the day before in the rain. My aim was to get in a 15 mile run in the morning before checking out and heading to Comic Con for the last time. This didn’t quite go to plan though as I only ran for 14 miles. Having run the day before, still recovering with my knee, and not having rested made this run a lot harder than it should have been.

When I got back to the hotel we sorted out our belongings and when checking out we left the majority of the stuff with the hotel to pick up later. I took my Star Trek “Federation” book with me in hope of getting Sir Patrick Stewart to sign it, and also my 150-500mm lens in case we saw a panel. Both of these I carried around in a carrier bag which admittedly was less than ideal, especially when you consider the weight of the two.

We then queued in the queue hall for one last time, this time in a row further along than before. Once it was time for the show to open we headed straight to Hall 1A10 to queue for the Karate Kid 30th Anniversary panel. The convention staff for this one were a little obsessive with asking people to fill in the gaps in the line when there were no more gaps to fill – no idea what he expected people to do. I thought at the time that maybe he expected the line to be filled tighter than a subway car would be. This only lasted around an hour though as the panel was scheduled to start at 11:00.

When the panel started it turned out two whole rows were reserved for press, but only three members of press arrived which was a waste of empty seats people could have used. Ralph Macchio and company were then delayed in traffic getting to the convention centre which meant the panel didn’t start until 11:25 though sadly it didn’t over run to accommodate this. It wasn’t a bad panel and what they covered were stories about the filming of the first movie and how things have been since then. There were also a few comments about the remake, but they never gave their opinion on it.

Our hope was to then queue in the autographing hall, but once again Sir Patrick Stewart had cancelled his attendance for the day and was told he would turn up if he felt like it. We couldn’t really wait around in case he decided to attend anyway, so we sat and ate some lunch and then wandered around the show floor with no real aim. I made very little attempt to take more photographs as the bag with my lens in was getting heavy and seeing the same stalls for the fourth day in a row was getting boring. It could just be that by now we were tired from how much we’d been able to do in the days that had preceded this one. Perhaps if we’d had a later flight we may have attempted see more.

Eventually we decided to leave New York Comic Con for the last time, so we took a slow walk to the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of 48th and 9th to get a donut and some hot chocolate. Unfortunately they didn’t have the lemon donut the others had available, and actually had a very small selection so I went with the Boston Scream Donut.

We sat in there for close to an hour before wandering down to a bench near the USS Intrepid that overlooked the Hudson River. It was quite nice in the sun, but it was still a long wait until our 16:05 pickup. We decided to head back to the hotel early so we’d have some time to sort out our hand luggage before being picked up.

As stated in the Go AirLink Shuttle details, we were outside the hotel early – about 5 minutes earlier than it told us to be. However the transport was then 30 minutes late despite us being the first to be picked up. It seems apparent this must happen regularly considering they were an hour late picking us up from the airport at the start of this trip. It may actually have been easier to have taken a taxi cab instead, but that’s something we’d know for next time.

Traffic to the airport was slow going, and it took us around 1hr 30 to get there – this made it a little more understandable why our pick-up was scheduled to be 5 hours before the flight. We were the last to be dropped off at the terminal, but we were turned out to be lucky that we could get seats next to each other on the flight home. The self-service machine didn’t like my sister’s passport though so we had no choice but to use the check-in desk.

Once through a relatively quick security check we ate at 5Steak for one last meal before our flight. I went for a medium-cooked steak burger which came with fries. It wasn’t a bad meal, probably on a par with the burger that The Jolly Monk had done, and certainly way better than the likes of Five Guys.

We boarded the plane at 20:15 to find that there were quite a number of empty seats, and not long after we were up in the air for the next leg of our journey home.

During the flight to Dublin I watched the last 20 minutes of Empire of the Sun followed by A Million Ways To Die in the West. I thought the latter was a brilliantly funny film and really enjoyed the Back to the Future reference with the DeLorean DMC-12 in it. The inflight meal wasn’t bad – it was like a cheese based ravioli with a chocolate brownie.

We arrived in Dublin 40 minutes earlier than scheduled and then made our way through passport control and then security. It seems a bit daft to go through security again considering we’d come straight from another aircraft with the same restrictions – but it’s their procedure. Apparently this procedure is in place because they’re responsible for the security of your final destination.

We boarded the aircraft for the next leg of our journey home at 09:15, not far off 24 hours since I’d woken up the previous day. I was sleep deprived, yet still I couldn’t sleep on the plane home. Eventually we landed ahead of schedule and it was relatively quick to get out of Birmingham Airport and onto the train home.

It had been different to my previous trips for so many reasons, but it was no less enjoyable. At last I’d seen “The Big Apple” and got to experience another Comic Con. There was so much to see and do, yet we had managed to cram it all (or at least as much as we could) into a little over a week. It truly is the city that never sleeps.