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That is nuts.

Is it glass or plastic?

Here are my shoes after 2 days of walking in the rain had to buy new

Important stuff that I tried to post that didn't and is now lost will quickly recreate. Room Service 1 time per day. Cruise Compass can be had, although our steward didn't last night. Blankets required to sit on balcony in the sun. They are available. robes don't come with ties, and the crew doesn't seem to notice. DL concierge cleared our reservation on IFly and we can do it again in the future for free. Krystal was over served last night, I became aware as we were sitting in Jamie's and I said there is the captain, at which point she shouted captain and waved. This was about 30 minutes after the turn around. He acknowledged continued on his way. Returned about 2 minutes later and shook hands. I will have to ask her if she remembered doing this. 🤣 Sigh....

Hmmm weird double post. That is what happens when you are typing on multiple devices

Still not able to log into work. So, after Chops lunch, I skipped dessert and left K with the two Pam’s we met at lunch, and was off to the FlowRider, it was about 12:30, and there were 4 people there. One a guy doing boogie board of all things with a cloudy windy 56F day. The wave apparently is 2 days old and they haven’t painted the line down the sides yet. It is a very easy wave, the only problem I have discovered with it is that you can’t feel when you are at the top, and I surfed off the top at least three times in my two hours and about 20 runs. It was tolerable when the sun popped out but freezing even in my 3mm full suit. Not horrible, but not optimal at all. On the upside, I did close to 20 runs in 2 hours. They never changed the staff on the wave during the whole time I was there, which seemed odd, especially since Poppy and Maria were freezing. There is a lot of water on the top of the wave I was having a lot of trouble finding my board when it was buried after surfing off the top and then running out the fall to not fall. I texted K at some point and asked if she was in room with luggage, she replied yes, so went to the room, rigged my clothesline on the balcony, and changed into dry clothes hung the wet clothes, and we went to find the solarium and the gym, where she will spend much of the next 10 days. Then we got a cocktail at the Solarium bar, and went out to find a spot about 45 minutes prior to sailing past the Statue of Liberty. The sail by was fine if unexciting. After we went to DL for a couple of glasses of wine. Why do some of the staff bring you a receipt and others don’t? Had that experience in both the DL and Chops last night. I don’t get it. The DL was full, but they didn’t open up, and I suspect they will not open up Music Hall as an overflow. After dinner, I ordered a double Gran Marnier neat, tasted very cognac not very orange. I suspect it is either a knock off brand or they blend it with a cheap brandy or cognac. Not complaining it tasted fine, just not quite right.😂 Needless to say, after dinner I flipped channels on TV and we were both asleep by 8:30. I woke up with the sun obviously hitting the curtain beside the bed, it was 5:59AM when I checked my phone. Guess I will gather some food and a coffee to take back to the room now, as we are approaching 1 hour til IFly, and after that FlowRider at 10. JC

I have a conundrum, apparently we hit a milestone on this cruise, I am supposed to fill out a piece of paper by today, in order to get my block. Do I really want the block? K, definitely doesn't want the block. I need guidance from the group. jc

According to a little old lady I just helped by "fixing" the coffee machine, at 11PM we were met with a helicopter from Halifax, which always made more sense to me logistically, than Boston. We are definitely sailing east as the sun is on the DL side of the ship.

Statue of Liberty from Anthem deck 15

Ship, not really

Finding Adrienne's.

Here are some shots from inside Statue of Liberty. I filmed in on my X3, but haven't dealt with those files yet.

Here is a completely out of context shot of Rhodri sleeping as we took the new Airstream to Alabama.

So, the view from room 921. And the row from row D seats 10-12 before the play Six. If the play had an intermission I am not sure how people would have returned to their seats as they were super tight.

Well let's see if I can post a few pixies.

LB it is all good. I am well aware how CC works!🤣

yeah, they announced and turned the ship while we were in the DL meeting new "friends". We were supposed to get close enough for helicopter to do the lift. No clue if it happened or not already. From the DL at this time I can't tell if we are sailing east or west.😀

So, as I mentioned in my reply to Jimbo, getting on the ship was easy and quick. I am sure I have never boarded a ship that early. We were boarding while people were still disembarking with luggage from the building. We booked all of our dinners (UDP) for the whole cruise based on show times and port times. I think we booked 6 Chops, 4 Jamies and 1 Wonderland. Probably have sushi for lunch one time if it is open then. The DL this am is busy and noisy, but not insane like some TAs we have done. I am going to try to log into work on my Mac now, as I was struggling with the two factor authentication and reached out to my IT guy to turn it the heck off for me. JC

The Pizza was pretty much as I remember, but due to the weather and the time of the year we weren’t eating on the little street. Of course the last time we were here K didn’t have alpha gal, and I am sure the multi Italian meats that I probably ordered tasted better than grilled chicken and artichoke hearts. 🤣 It was a nice lunch, and it was fun to search it down. Mini adventure that I love being a full type A personality.

With tip it was 33, this was for a 9:10 pickup, as our scheduled boarding time was 10. Our driver had to fill up his car.😂 So, we got to the port at 10:04. Star Class got on the ship at 10:20, we followed with the Key about 2 minutes later. I booked the Double tree using 50,000 points and money came to $342. Since I have the Amex Centurion card, I got a $15 dollar a day food and beverage credit. I used about $20 of my $45 on 2 glasses of wine in the small bar. The connection to the train station was never open during the weekend. Do not buy round trip tickets from the machines and the ticket taker takes your ticket as if it was a one way ticket. When I argued I got the blank stare fortunately they didn’t take my ticket on the return, because no ticket taker got around. I am 100% convinced they would have! We wanted quick easy access to NYC. I am sure there were better hotels in the area. At least I hope there are. The DT was fine, the neighborhood not so much.

Here on board, in the DL. No key, fortunately people inside let us in. We were the first to the Key check in at about 10:20, nobody there. Krystal found a deck in the lobby between Chic and Grande. Somebody needs to tell me what we are supposed to do with it. She took a picture of it and needs to identify the find and relocate. jc

I post with my iPad and I don’t carry it around, all the pictures are on other devices, will update later. I need a keypad to post. Hate fingering around, and you all know how windy I am. 😘

You will appreciate this, on the red eye flight, there were 5 empty seats in Business class and I was stuck in the middle of row 31. On another correction early on I mentioned we were on the 11th floor of the Doubletree, it only has 10 floors, we are on 9 with a lovely view of the train station entrance. 😆

Back again to yesterday now. It was awful in the rain, and I had decided to leave my ugly goretex tennis shoes at home and opted for an older pair of On Cloud shoes that are more comfortable, I was just trying to not take extra of anything. When we first stepped out of Penn Station in NYC, I stepped into a deep puddle and had wet feet instantly. While my shoes are not waterproof, I was surprised how wet they got my feet and socks. That problem only got worse as we walked the city between about 25th Street and 48th Street and around. This morning, as I was putting on my shoes that I spent a lot of time drying out with the hair dryer, I noticed the bottom of the shoe was separating, but we were to be at the ferry terminal by 9:30AM and since it is Sunday it is not possible to buy new shoes. So, off to the train station across the street (the over pass from the hotel to train station has been closed) boarded the train. It was not raining yet but looked like it could at any point. So, I looked at the map, and it said it was an hour and 20 minutes walking. Crap, I had forgotten how far it was. So, we found a subway station about 20 minutes into our walk, and took the 1 train to the South Ferry station. Got there in about another 20 minutes, after the short walk in the rain, we got our wrist bands for the crowns and our tickets to board the ferry. Went thru security. Got on the ferry, grabbed a bottle of water and a pretzel for breakfast on the ferry. We had been on the ferry previously, and toured the island and museums, so our goal was to visit the crown. So, straight to the check in for that. We are told we have to put her umbrella (which had pretty much died) and her tiny purse in a locker before we could go in. We re-entered, and again got to go thru security. We immediately climbed the 170 ish steps up the pedestal. Walked around the top of the pedestal with a good burn in the legs. Then we started the final 160 ish steps up the tiny helical staircase with tiny steps and a constant turn. When we made it to the top there were two park rangers and about 8 people in there. It is another tiny spot with very small windows. At this time I was pretty smoking hot from the walk and the extra clothing and there was not much air movement. I am really happy we did this in April when it was 50 degrees. I can’t imagine doing this in the summer. After we retraced our steps down the other side of the helical steps we toured the museum in the base of the pedestal, then proceeded to the ferry. Krystal called her 96 year old mother to tell her where we were, since she had told her that she needed a vacation away from her mother. 😂 While riding the ferry to Ellis Island and back to the ferry terminal, we figured out the pizza place we ate at last time. I did it by looking at pictures from that trip I had saved online ( Smugmug), and saw some local signage from next door places, and realized it was Adriennes Pizza that we wanted. We walked in the rain to Pearl Street (not stone street, but in that section of town). Had our pizza and a glass of wine each. Then we went the Bowling Green subway station caught the subway to Union Square and 14th street which was the closest station on that line to Paragon Sports. They showed they had some waterproof On in my size in stock (also found that out while riding the ferry). So, tried them on, told them they could keep my old shoes, at this point both of the pair had completely died on the soles. They were flopping around it is amazing that they really weren’t difficult to walk in. I will post pictures later. At this point the lovely K was tired, so we did the shopping run at Whole Foods, and the rest is history. She has been sleeping the entire time we have been back in the room, I typed all of this, readied some of the baggage for tomorrow and watched the Indy Car race from Barber on TV. Going to risk waking her now to go get a glass of wine and eat. For now, good bye! jc

So, I will begin with the eventful portion of the first day. We boarded our first flight that was a tiny bit delayed on American Airlines. I am Gold and my wife is not with AA. Our flights were purchased using cancelled flight credits during covid, so I didn’t book them technically together, but when they changed the original flights and I rebooked different flights I had them linked. This was all months ago. So, the night before our flights, I get an email from AA saying I had been upgraded to Business or first since there was no first on our flights. I tried to get her an upgrade but failed. So, when we boarded I went back to the middle of the plane in the first group to sit in her assigned seat. She then boarded group 6 and sat up front. Plane takes off uneventful, and I am sitting playing on my IPad listening to the Strawbs (you have to be old to know them)😂 on my noise cancelling headphones. About 20 plus minutes out on a 105 minute flight the captain comes on but I can’t hear the announcement well, but it was not a normal announcement. So, I pulled my plugs, and the stewardess said, everyone needs to return to their seats, and prepare for landing. She said it is nothing serious yet, but we have a problem with the plane and we are returning to the original airport. Crap. We were already about 40 minutes late departing, and we had a two hour layover at Charlotte which was going to be perfect for dinner in the Amex Centurion lounge. So we spent the next 40 plus minutes returning and circling the area. By the time we finally went into our approach, we could have been to our destination or at least close. Originally we were to land at Newark about 9PM. Once we landed, we started texting, obviously AA knew we were missing our connecting flight, so we could rebook in the app. She fought me for a bit while we were taxing into the terminal and then sitting at the terminal while they determined if we could fly this plane or not. Another hour passed. I realized that the only option to get to Newark was the last flight from Charlotte to Newark, as I had originally suggested. So, I told her to book her ticket and I booked mine. Finally, they had us deplane and after another 30 minutes in the terminal we got on a plane that previously had a problem, but was now fixed. We finally boarded it, and waited another 30minutes for maintenance check offs. Our flight took off for Charlotte. We were scheduled to land around 9:30. The Amex lounge closes at 10:30 with no more alcohol after 10 and no more food after 10:15PM. So, we rushed to the lounge, I was able to get a couple of glasses.😆 Food was pretty picked over but adequate. Since the lounge was closed and our new flight had been pushed back from 11PM departure to 12PM departure. We went to the gate. Sat in the uncomfortable chairs. The gate agent then said, our crew had arrived, but the pilot was still coming in on a flight from Dallas. So, we sat there, and sat there. At 1AM the pilot arrived and we boarded shortly after. We landed at Newark at around 2:50AM. On the upside, the luggage was sitting at the carousel when we finally arrived from about a mile from baggage claim. Grabbed bags, I booked an Uber that said it was 7 minutes away. Turns out that wasn’t accurate it was more like 15 minutes. Got in the Uber…. Driver misses a turn on the free way, and my map shows on my Iphone a blue line on both sides of the freeway. We had to go about 5 miles the wrong way until we could turn around to the right way. It ended up we got to the hotel at 3:30AM. It was after 4AM when I finally turned the tv off and went to sleep. O, and by the way she complained about her seat in business class because the people in front of her were chatting with the flight steward the entire flight and she was unable to sleep. I was in row 31 crammed into a broken down seat in the middle seat of two fat guys. She, also, didn’t understand why it took e so long to get off the plane. 🤣 jc