Island Hopping 2024: New York, JFK, TWA Hotel

Friday May 3: Today we start the long flights home.  We left Rome flying on LOT, the Polish Airline, which took us first to Warsaw and then, after a four hour layover, across the Atlantic to New York's JFK.  Our next flight isn’t until 10:00AM tomorrow morning so we decided to spend the night at the TWA Hotel which is the old TWA terminal at JFK airport. 

Flying into Warsaw we passed over the Świętokrzyskie Mountains

Staying at the TWA Hotel is like taking a trip back in time without needing a DeLorean. We found ourselves strolling through the TWA Hotel, feeling like we’ve stepped right into the golden age of air travel...where they've turned the clock back to the swinging '60s faster than you can say "Martini, shaken, not stirred." The place is the epitome of retro-cool, with its sleek lines, vibrant colors, and that iconic TWA logo plastered everywhere like it's going out of style (spoiler: it never will). Music from the sixties was always in the air, and don't even get us started on the Connie, that vintage Lockheed Constellation parked out front like it's waiting to whisk us away to some glamorous destination. So, dreaming of sipping a cocktail at the Sunken Lounge and catching some zzz's in a room straight out of "Mad Men," we buckled up, and enjoyed our ticket to a groovy blast from the past.  This was a very fun place to stay.  Though I found it a bit disturbing that what the hotel was displaying as historic kitsch, seems like just yesterday to me, and, by God, it wasn’t kitsch, we really were cool!

This is the Connie

Sandy at the 1962 mock-up beauty salon

The Ambassador Club was the first Airline Lounge

The architect, Erro Saarinen, just couldn't bring himself to design a straight line or a sharp angle

This tube was used as a passenger passageway between the ticketing terminal and the airplane gates

There were a number of vintage cars sitting in front of the terminal, now hotel

The TWA Constellations (Connies) set the speed record for commercial airplane transcontinental flights.  Howard Hughes said "We weren't trying to set a speed record, we were just trying to build the best plane we could.  It just happened to go fast!"

This is what our living rooms looked like in the early 60s

I forget what these were for

Here’s to that earlier version of Elon Musk … Howard Hughes (TWA’s founder).  And, here’s to our return to the United States.

 A mock-up of Howard Hughes' Idlewild Airport office, (now JFK)

Rome to Warsaw

Warsaw to JFK