An old Christmas standard declares, “There’s no place like home for the holidays,” and next Christmas, Athens residents Paula and Daniel Laurita, will likely take the song to heart.

A Northeast blizzard left the couple stranded at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for six days –– five days longer than the couple planned to be there.

Following a Christmas visit with family members in New Jersey, the couple planned to fly out Sunday, Dec. 26, but instead found themselves trapped in the airport with thousands of other angry travelers after 5,000 flights were canceled.

After spending Sunday night and most of Dec. 27 in the airport, the couple found a hotel room that night, ahead of what they thought would be a flight out of New York to Nashville on Tuesday. The Dec. 28 flight south, however, was not to be.

“Our plane was supposed to leave at 3 p.m., but it was delayed twice,” Paula Laurita said Wednesday. “A tire blew on the plane and they couldn’t get a mechanic out to fix it.”

After Tuesday’s flight was pushed back to 7 p.m., the couple went to the Delta agents and asked if they could get on another flight. Laurita said they would have happily gone through any other connecting city, but they were told the quickest they could get home would be on New Year’s Eve on a connecting flight to Atlanta.

In the end, the Tuesday flight was canceled because the pilot and crew had been on standby for too long, and would not be able to fly. So, the Lauritas decided to make the best of their situation and settled on a visit to snow-covered Manhattan.

“On Wednesday, we saw a play on Broadway, and on Thursday, we went and visited my father-in-law,” Laurita said. “Other than getting to spend a little extra time with family, most of it was spent waiting around in the airport.”

The couple finally flew out of New York en route to Atlanta at 6 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, and after catching a connecting flight to Huntsville, returned home at about 10 a.m.

“I was surprised we didn’t get home and just fall into bed,” she said. “I will say we didn’t stay up until midnight.”

After a virtual shutdown of New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was criticized for the city’s slow response. Laurita also had stiff criticism for the mayor after what she and her husband experienced.

“We were watching (Bloomberg’s) press conference and he was asked, ‘If you had an alert saying (the snow) was coming, why didn’t you announce what the plans would be to the public?” she said. “His statement was, ‘They won’t listen anyway.’ To use that as an excuse was ridiculous.”

By 11 a.m. on Dec. 27, snow had stopped falling, and 911 was flooded with calls, according to an Associated Press report. At one point, the system was 1,300 calls behind. Nearly 50,000 people called in a day — one of the busiest days in memory, apart from Sept. 11, 2001. City officials said many were repeat calls and many weren’t true emergencies.

By Dec. 30, officials announced, snowplows had been down practically every street, at least once. By New Year’s Eve, the sun came out to take care of what the city couldn’t. Underneath the snow were piles of untouched garbage.

Laurita said officials made poor decisions throughout the city, including a decision to clear bicycle paths, and not major roads.

“Not everything is going to be perfect in that type of situation, but locally, we criticize ourselves when we’re not prepared (for bad weather),” she said. “Snow is not a freak occurrence in New York, and I was surprised they didn’t do a better job.”

Laurita said one of the more amazing things about the couple’s experience is that they didn’t fight the entire time. She said her husband told their niece that they smelled too bad to get close enough to inflict any damage.

“I did tell my husband, no more over-Christmas travel,” she said. “I think next Christmas, we’ll be at home.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report