Flying from NYC to Puerto Rico
Grandma’s musings
Wed Am. (Feb. 4) – Arrived N.Y.C.
Picked up literature at Caribbean Tourist place – (Madison Ave). On to the East Side Air Terminal – breakfast there – then bus to Idlewild – Eastern Airlines plane 12:00 noon -
Wonderful flight -19000 ' – smooth – over water entire trip to Puerto Rico
Landed at San Juan at 6:00 p.m. (sunset from plane lovely). Stepped out into tropic warmth! What joy!
Settled at International Airport Hotel. – Taxi to Cecilia's place for dinner (fair). Sat out on open deck at hotel watching stars and planes before turning in.
Disclosure: The Vintage Travelers is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more
My musings:
Idlewild
Having successfully made their way from Rochester to New York City, my grandparents made good use of their morning, first tracking down the recommended travel books at Caribbean Tourism Association (today the CTO) and then heading to the East Side Air Terminal, an impressive Art Deco-style building no longer in existence.
From there, they took a bus where? To Idlewild! Though the name might be all but forgotten today, Idlewild, later named after the late John F. Kennedy, was one of NYC’s major airports at the time. I never thought I’d read a detailed history of an airport terminal, but I found an interesting account of the construction of the terminal my grandparents traveled through, complete with awesome vintage photos of the Eastern Airlines Terminal. There must have been a great deal of major construction ongoing at the airport when my grandparents passed through in 1959, as the actual terminal was completed in October of that year.
Diehard airport history buffs might want to take a listen to this podcast on the renaming of Idlewild Airport.
Flight to Puerto Rico
Although pilots still announce the altitude at which our planes are hurtling through the air, I honestly rarely pay much attention to it, distracted by my individual screen where I’m scrolling through the movies to decide what to watch, and certainly never think to jot it down (ie make a note of it on my iPhone) when the pilot makes the nearly inaudible announcement. Grandma makes fascinating observations about the altitude and the overall flight and I wonder if she was perhaps more attune to such phenomena due to my Uncle David’s knowledge of planes and piloting.
I can’t help but compare her inflight experience to what plane travel is like today, each of us with headphones on, in our own little individual screen-generated bubble. The pure enjoyment of the experience is palpable, she is alive in the moment, delighting in it, relishing everything about it, from the sunset observed from the plane to the joyful feeling of stepping out into tropic warmth! Such a change from chilly Rochester, NY in the dead of winter.
They continued to savor their shared moments at the International Airport Hotel in San Juan, sitting out on the deck watching stars and planes. When I think of the many airports I’ve been to that are surrounded by impossibly massive, unmanageable hotel parks, I don’t think of them as a place I'd spend a pleasant evening, but back then, they were able to make a lovely evening out of it!
From what I can tell in the photos from the hotel’s website today, the business is still very much alive and available for booking.
I have never stayed at this hotel but I am certainly intrigued to give it a try when I’m able to travel again and wander the halls where my grandparents tread, perhaps even enjoy a drink out on the deck if it’s still there. One can always hope.
Their flight from NYC to San Juan took them 6 hours. Currently United Airlines and others offer several flights a day from NYC to Puerto Rico, the direct flight taking around 4 hours. Check them out on Skyscanner and Momondo.
Fair to middling
Grandma Bowen always documented not only where meals were eaten, but how good they were. Few, in her view, rose above “fair to middling,” a fascinating term which was one of her favorite descriptives that I can just hear her saying right now.