New York, here we come! Downsizing

Today we're heading to New York. Since our flight doesn't leave until 5:30 PM, we have plenty of time to have a leisurely breakfast in the morning and then make our way to the airport at a relaxed pace. Flora woke up extra early to buy her dad a coffee and a little cake for his birthday, into which we could put a 4 and an 8 as candles. Our ticket from Tokyo to New York is a so-called 'Hidden City Hack' ticket. This means that we don't have a ticket directly from Tokyo to New York, but a ticket from Tokyo via Seattle to LA and another ticket from Seattle via New York to Syracuse. However, we're not flying to LA or Syracuse. So we board in New York and get off in Seattle, then let the flight from Seattle to LA expire and board the flight from Seattle directly to New York. We also let the flight from New York to Syracuse expire. In fact, this combination is cheaper than a ticket from Tokyo to Seattle and from Seattle to New York. We didn't come up with this idea ourselves, but the Internet Travel Agency did. What they only told us in the small print, however, was that because we didn't fly the ticket all the way, we couldn't check in any luggage. So we were only allowed to take carry-on baggage. So far, it hasn't been too bad. We haven't noticed that we're missing anything yet. As soon as we arrived in New York, we immediately noticed the difference compared to Tokyo. Everything seems somewhat dirtier and less organized. The host of our Airbnb room was so nice that she allowed all four of us to sleep in this room. Any other option would have cost us about 200-300 € per night. The overnight prices in New York are insane! After waiting in a long line for a taxi at the airport, we sat in the terminal with our luggage and were surprised to see everything also written in Spanish. Then an older gentleman approached us and said he could drive us to our apartment for the price of a taxi. Although we felt a bit uneasy about it, we accepted his offer and he drove us in a rickety, albeit large van, halfway across New York, telling us about all the sights and his travels to Spain during the Franco era. When we finally arrived at our apartment, it was already so late that no delivery service would bring us food. We didn't expect that we wouldn't be able to get pizza delivered to us in New York at 10 PM. So we had to go to bed hungry. But that wasn't so bad because our day had already been 38 hours long, as the time difference from Tokyo to New York is 14 hours, and we were very tired.