princeton123211

There will be taxis and Uber/Lyft. NJ taxis aren't exactly the greatest (a lot are older and a bit tatty), and they don't sort of just hover like in NYC, so I would personally Uber/Lyft there which will be quick and easy. Frankly there is a case to be made to just Uber from your hotel in lower Manhattan direct to Cape Liberty which will be in the neighborhood of $100. Especially if you have a bunch of luggage it's a bit of a schlep with the public transport to get to Bayonne, only to then take a $15 Uber. They aren't comparable on price but more weighing how you value saving a bunch of time and effort before boarding.

Uber and Lyft work very well in Honolulu and has become our go to when we are there for bouncing around. Cars are readily available and you can use the XL version to comfortably take 4 adults. I don't think you are going to see the compression in demand because of the cruise ship arrival that you think-- on a port stop a sizable portion will be piling onto busses for prearranged tours. If it were the end of the cruise you would most likely see more demand. Bonus is that we have found that a sizable amount of Uber/Lyft drivers are off duty service members or the spouses of service members stationed locally.

I agree with this and we do this all the time in the same situation-- but I would save yourself some time and go to a hotel that is not in the port area and more in the area you'll be touring around in. This will save you the time of having to go back to South Boston which is sort of out of the way of the major tourist areas and not necessarily on the way to the airport. Some centrally located hotels that have been happy to do this for us in the past are the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Ritz Carlton, and Liberty Hotel-- all are in areas that you will want to walk around in if it's your first time in Boston.

Don't let it dissuade you though if you do want to see St George-- its super charming and well worth the visit. I like that side of the island the best. I think what we're both saying is that it would be a lot on your last day when you have to be onboard the ship at the Dockyard at 4:30, but easily doable if you moved the tour around.

I would have done this in reverse-- take the tour on the second day, that way you are guaranteed not to miss the ship. Then you could absolutely go to St Georges and work your way back to Hamilton and Horseshoe Bay and take your time with it.

Canada currently has much more rigorous Covid protocols than the US. As the previous poster mentioned, because of this, most testing sites are gone. There are tests available at a very small number of pharmacies but they are drive up and you would have to rent a car to do it. Getting an online proctored self test will be the easiest, cheapest, and most convenient. We've used the Abbott tests several times and its very easy and accepted by Canada for entry.

If you want a great zodiac whale watch out of Lahaina just book privately with Captain Steves and take the guess work out of it. We've used them for years and they do a great job.

Yes, you can take NJ Transit or Amtrak directly into New York Penn Station from the EWR train station. I'm sure there are also busses that someone else might know more about but I think the train options will be faster, especially during rush hour.

Zaandam is a very comfortable and traditional ship-- technically sister ship to the former flagships Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Check and see if they have any "Lanai" cabins available on Deck 3. These are technically oceanview cabins that have a direct outside door to the wrap around promenade deck-- essentially a big unprivate balcony. And they are priced less than balcony cabins.

I never said area-- I meant to refer to Quebec tour companies but I can see how I might have left that a little vague. To correct-- virtually everyone in the tourist trade (tours, hotels, transportation) are bilingual. I have traveled in Quebec extensively, even to some more remote places, and have never had an issue with finding someone bilingual in English/French.

HAL does a nice job on the NE sailings and their smaller ships allow you to call on Montreal which the NCL ship is too large to reach.

Where specifically in New England are you going? I'm going to make the assumption that you are sailing up the St Lawrence but not all cruises do. If you do sail up the St Lawrence there will be scenic cruising along the river portion of the trip as well as Saguenay if your ship calls there (again, no idea if it does or doesn't form the info provided). Saguenay in particular is very scenic and would be worth it to me to have a balcony for. Besides that it will be very much just normal ocean sailing (assuming it's leaving New York or Boston etc and going up and down to Quebec or Montreal and back).

Is there an alternative to bringing a car at all for you? Sometimes car services can be breakeven with the parking and will be a lot less hassle for you, especially with 2 nights before at a hotel.

We usually just do Quebec on our own since it's easy to just walk pretty much everywhere. We did a bunch of years ago (this was prob 2017) use a company called Tours Voir Quebec which did a private guided walking tour which was quite good. I did a little googling and it looks like they are still in business. I wouldn't worry about English speaking-- if you see a tour you like researching book it. Virtually everyone in Quebec is bilingual and will quickly pivot to English when you engage with them.

I hear ya but it's pretty much the same as anything else right now in the travel sector. Check into a 5 star hotel you're paying a ton for right now and 9/10 it'll be a bit underwhelming compared to before. Your cruise ship will most likely be understaffed and overstressed. Domestic airlines are cancelling 1000 flights a day right now and cutting routes. It's not necessarily a Bermuda thing.

Agree with this-- tropical/Hawaiian themed but not really a proper tiki bar in the ilk of Trader Vics or the Tonga Room.

Yes-- you will lose land based cell service. The ship will travel several miles off the coast but cell service will disappear not long after leaving FLL and switch over to the stronger signal of the ship's cell network (which can be very expensive and slow). You could roll the dice on the ship's wifi to see if you can stream it (most likely wont work well), but the Infinity has satellite television and you should be able to have them put it on in a bar if it is being broadcast on a major network.

They can sell out. We've never called on the island on a cruise-- just numerous overnight stays at hotels on Catalina over the years. But I do remember on two occasions, when a smaller/older Carnival ship was anchored there, that they were sold out in the morning. We were able to rent later on in the afternoon when folks were headed back to the ship.

It's small. Most of the island is uninhabited and the town where you are dropped off at, Avalon, is a small fairly upscale place thats easy to walk around with a bunch of restaurants and some historic features. It was essentially developed by the Wrigley family of chewing gum fame and owned to this day by a descendent organization the Wrigley's founded to be stewards of the island. Worth headed over to the Casino for a tour (which isn't actually a casino) and its adjoining art deco theater. There are your typical diving/snorkling opportunities and rides in glass bottom boats and semi submersibles. You can also rent golf carts to do some exploring on your own or take a guided jeep tour if you want to get further inland to explore some of the more rugged parts of the island. But yeah, most people on a cruise stop eat, drink, and get some sun and you'll be mixing with local Angelinos who are over one mainly 1-2 night getaways to the island from the mainland.

It looks like this is a limo aggregator and not an actual brick and mortar limo company-- they also curiously will match you to a NYC real estate agent from their website but have no actual real estate listings. You will most likely end up with a third party car/driver that they take a cut from. If you want a high end black car I would book direct with actual car companies like Carey, EmpireCLS, or Savoya. If you want to go through a higher end aggregator you can use the BlackLane app-- have used it many times both in NYC and internationally works very well. If you are looking for something a little lower priced (with slightly older cars) either Dial7 or Carmel are reputable and work well in NYC. Personally I would just Uber or take Lyft, especially for the super short trip from your Manhattan hotel to the MCT which you will inevitably overpay for using a black car.

Yes and no. While NCL isn't requiring vaccines after Sept 3rd, there are several countries like Antiqua, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman Islands, Greece, and Spain that all still do and you will not be able to board a cruise that goes to any of those countries, even if its just a stopover, without the full vaccination course. Uber or Lyft are your best bet. UberX is about $40 and Lyft is similar.

What is your "go to" hotel? I think that would help us tremendously offer you an alternative. Without knowing your budget, preferences, etc its pretty difficult. Even without the General Assembly prices are 3-4x what they were before at a lot of top end places in Manhattan. My assumption is that they are not running at 100% capacity and charging the difference to make up for it although no one would admit to that. I used to live in Tudor City, which is adjacent to the UN, and it not a super fun time to be in that area of town. Most of the major delegations all used to stay at the Waldorf Astoria and Waldorf Towers which consolidated things a little but but with the Waldorf closed for conversion to condos they scattered all over to area hotels and the traffic issues have actually gotten worse. Since you are on a luxury ship and you mention 5 star a couple times in your request I am going to generalize and assume you are looking for a top property. If you wanted to stay near Midtown you could go over to the west side with the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle. The Equinox Hotel in Hudson Yards a but further south would also work. I haven't stayed here, as its fairly new, but they also recently opened The Pendry Manhattan West near Hudson Yards. The Pendry property in Baltimore is top notch so I would bet this one would be too. If you still wanted some old school New York vibes you could go further up on the East side to The Carlyle which, on 76th Street, should be just outside of the commotion of the GA. Ritz Carlton just opened a new property in Nomad. There is a risk that some of the GA shenanigans could spill over here due to proximity and the fact its brand new. Downtown my pick would be the Four Seasons near the WTC site. As a former New Yorker downtown wouldn't be my first pick but this is a very nice property.

Also worth mentioning that Bermuda has its own taxi app called Hitch that works a lot like Uber. You can call a taxi and pay for it via a credit card in the app. Also an estimated time is given and you can track the approaching car much like you do with Uber. There are some that will point out that there is a modest fee associated per ride but I think most people would agree that it would be worth it if faced with a 2 mile walk. We use it quite a bit on the island and its helpful when we are in out of the way places. It also helps because you don't have to carry as much cash.

As the previous poster mentioned, you will most likely have to carry your own bags off to make this work. You are not docking in Manhattan. What are the cross streets for the hotel? 5th Ave doesn't go through Times Square-- its two long blocks to the East of it. The reason I ask is that you will most likely have a good 10 min walk once you drop bags to 770 7th which is 7th between 50th and 51st Streets so keep that in mind.