Day 15: The Met – Central Park and back home

April 23, 2022

After breakfast, we leave the kids sitting on the (almost packed) suitcases in the room and walk to Avis, where we have booked a rental car for today. After passing the parking garage, where the car rental is located, twice, we finally find it. After a short wait, we receive a Toyota Siena Hybrid, just like two weeks ago when we arrived. However, this one is in a desolate condition. The glove compartment is ripped out of its anchor and won't close, it is hanging on my legs. The cleaning service did a very rough job. The door compartments still have the trash from the previous renters, there are several dents and scratches on the front, and it smells really bad in here. But it doesn't matter, we report all of this, it is noted, and then we drive back to the hotel. We only need the car today to store our suitcases and then drive to the airport.

Off we go to Central Park and the MET Museum. Grudgingly, we pay the $50 for the guarded parking garage (we don't want to leave our suitcases so obviously in the car - after all, we are traveling back with 7 fully packed suitcases!) and then go into the museum. After the security check, we are allowed in and start our tour. While my daughter finds her highlights among the impressionists (input for her art course), I could spend most of the time in the musical instrument exhibition (music teacher 😛). We leave the museum around 1:30 PM and get our lunch for today at one of the food trucks. After that, we walk through Central Park for about 2 hours. We still really like it here!

We leave the MET parking garage at around 4:00 PM and drive to JFK Airport, drop off our car, and make our way to the baggage drop-off with our suitcases. I was a bit skeptical whether it would actually work with the 2 suitcases per person at Singapore Airlines since we only flew with 1 suitcase per person to NW - but it works without any problems!

We relax at Dunkin´ Donuts, treat ourselves to a farewell donut with a delicious caramel latte, and then walk to the gate. Our plane takes off on time at 9 PM and after a bit of sleep and many movies, we arrive in Frankfurt the next morning.

About 'Shopping' and 'Customs': since we went shopping well above the duty-free allowance per person, we dutifully kept all receipts and noted on a piece of paper how much money we spent in each store. Right after immigration, I lined up at customs and declared that I want to declare something. The officers were very nice (and apparently surprised that someone wants to declare voluntarily 😳). They just wanted to know if I bought any electronics. No - only clothes. The officer calculated the best possible amount for me and corrected it downwards. He actually didn't want to see the receipts, my written summary was enough for him. Nobody wanted to see or check the suitcases later either. In parallel, a couple was searched who were wearing black leather jackets. These jackets exceeded the duty-free limit and since they wanted to cheat customs, they had to pay an additional fine. In the end, the two of them paid twice as much in fees for 2 leather jackets as the 4 of us did for our dutifully declared purchases.

We had calculated in advance what the fees would cost and thanks to the nice officer, we were well below that. I can only recommend to everyone here not to cheat customs. Because if you get caught, it gets really expensive!

Finally, we went back home!

Yay, everything worked out and after a 2-year wait, we were finally able to fly to New York!!!