12 Aug Please The Palate Pick of the Week: The TWA Hotel at JFK Airport

I had heard about this hotel when it first opened but never needed to stay near JFK airport until now. When I had to add an extra night in NY, with a morning flight the next day, I decided to forgo the morning traffic from New York City to JFK and stay near the airport. So I booked a room at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Was it everything I had expected? Yes, and that is why the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport is the Please The Palate pick of the week. The TWA Hotel is the only hotel at JFK Airport. And it is located right in the airport, at Terminal 5. My Uber driver drove me up to the front of the terminal and I immediately felt like I had traveled back in time. “These boots are made for walking” was playing overhead and 1960s-era cars sat outside. The TWA hotel is located in the former head house of the TWA Flight Center which was designed in 1962 by the architect Eero Saarinen. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1994 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Inside, the large, open former airline terminal is now the hotel lobby. The check-in counters to the left are hotel registration. The check-in counters to the right are located in the Food Hall. Here you can buy pizza, hot dogs, crepes, ice cream, and more. There is also a restaurant upstairs where you can sit down for full-service dining. There are 512 rooms at the TWA hotel located off of two wings – the Saarinen Wing is to the left and the Hughes Wing is to the right. To get to either wing, you walk up a red-carpeted ramp. Mid-way up the ramp in both wings is the elevator bank to the rooms. The Lobby is on the 4th floor and there are rooms both below and above the 4th floor. Exiting the elevator, a long hallway leads you to your room. The rooms are modern and spacious. The beds face the large glass window, and a long desk runs behind the bed. As the terminal was built in 1962, the retro yet modern hotel pays homage to the aviation world of the 1960s. There is an aviation history museum, a display of flight attendant uniforms from the 1960s, and more spread throughout the hotel. I enjoyed walking around the hotel and checking out all of the historical information around every nook and cranny. The hotel also has a large 10,000-square-foot gym, the world’s largest hotel gym. And there is a 1960s-style Sweet’N Low beauty salon where you can pose and take photos. And next door is a Twister room! And one of the coolest things is the rooftop pool and bar that overlook the runway. It is truly an amazing view! The TWA Hotel is a very cool hotel and it was fun to spend a night there. But what made it even better was that I did not have to get up extra early or sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the morning. Instead, I got a good night’s sleep and in the morning, I had my coffee and then casually walked to the Air Tran to travel to the my terminal for my flight. There are many reasons why I will stay at this hotel again during future travel.