Willdra’s Valiant Venezia Review

carol louise · June 16

Willdra, I am enjoying your visit to our fair city! From my apartment the Empire State Building illuminated at night is the last thing I see before closing my eyes, so I had fun finding my building in a couple of your photos from the top. When you took the photos, ironically, I was on Venezia returning to NY for disembarkation on the 6th.

silvercrikhix · June 16

Thanks for sharing Willdra! Your reviews are a delight themselves! Mmmm…🍓 🍓 🍓

edspec · June 16

Yay, another great review. Thank-you for the New York information and pics.

3smithboys · June 16

If I can’t be on a cruise… at least I can be reading a great Willdra review! ❤️

Frank12 · June 16

Following. Bring it!

Crusin Karen · June 16

Been checking every day for this! Enjoyed first 2 pages and you have had me laughing already. I was on this cruise-I live in NE NJ and had 10-10:30 arrival time and left at 9:15. Sounds like you had a great tourist day! 👏

MzShae · June 17

Whoomp! There it is!! Another Willdra adventure is here!💯🥳💜

VIFP1987 · June 17

Woohoo, another Willdra review!! So happy to see this! Can’t wait for the next installment!

ktinnc · June 17

So excited to follow along!

MEUB1112 · June 17

Definitely following a Willdra cruise!!

natefish95 · June 17

You and W are such a cute couple! Your reviews always bring a smile to my face when I read them!

I loved Venezia, so I hope you had an amazing time!

Knights on the Beach · June 17

I'm here for the fun!

willdra · June 17

Day 2

New York in a minute

On May 5, I woke up at 7:30 and immediately thanked God I still had a head. I’m not sure why, I just felt like I needed to. I also wondered what goes on at that bus terminal across from our hotel. There was constant activity and illumination happening over there. I suddenly understood why they were so eager to give us that hotel room. It was the room for southern suckers who didn’t know any better. We’d been had. We’d been took. We’d been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray. Run amok. They got us. But not for long.

W and I handled our hygiene, and when we no longer looked like gargoyles (or so we thought), we went into the hotel breakfast area downstairs and got coffee. There were lots of bodies packed in there. Ick. No wonder COVID mollywhopped us. We had it coming.

willdra · June 17

W wanted bagels, so he picked out a spot, and we walked down there to get them.There were so many choices, they had to put them on the wall so that people could visualize them. I had no idea what I wanted, so I just went for blueberry with blueberry cream cheese. W got 2. He said he was going to eat one then and save one for later. Yeah like there would be a shortage of bagels in NY later in the day. I told him what I wanted then I moved out of the way. Just like the other venues, space was very limited.

willdra · June 17

W got our food and I put my bagel in my bag cuz I wasn’t hungry after I had that coffee. He ate his quickly and we started on our way to The Met.

QQ New Yawk, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but why is there so much trash on the street all of the time? Now W and I are Mardi Gras regulars, so we are accustomed to seeing metric tons of trash on the streets after the parades, especially our favorite Endymion, which is 1 of the 2 largest parades. However, Nola is gonna have every single spot of it picked up come daybreak, and by the time the next krewe rolls, you will never know that there was a parade the day before. So why are people throwing trash in the street in NY (I didn’t see any parades), and why is the city not cleaning it up?

While we were walking I noticed a lot of random Dunkin’ Donuts and Popeyes sprinkled everywhere also. What is the reason for that? With all of the really good food choices, those can’t possibly be necessary. These are the very important mysteries of life that I ponder to keep my mind off of the fact that I will most likely clock another 12 miles walking that day.

willdra · June 17

As we were walking along, we had to stop and wait to cross the street, cuz they closed the road for a huge bikeathon that was going on. I think it was The Bike New York, FIVEBORO BIKE TOUR.

willdra · June 17

We cut thru Bryant Park, and ended up right at the New York Public Library. We had to run over and take pictures of the lions out front, since it was cool that we just happened upon them. We also laughed about it cuz we had just watched the latest Ghostbusters remake like the week or two before, and there was a short scene that took place in that very spot.

Don’t judge us for that, W and I go see everything. We both have the AMC movie memberships, so we pay $24/month, and we get to see 3 free movies every week. That’s our weekly date night, and it’s already paid for. Also as a bonus we have the refillable popcorn bucket so our popcorn is only $5, and since we have the movie passes our drinks are $5 too. So when we go to the movies every week, we usually spend $11 cuz I don’t get a drink. When people ask us how we can afford to cruise 2-3 times per year, this is one of the ways that we keep entertainment costs down, and we save a lot.

willdra · June 17

When we were done at the library, we continued on towards Grand Central Station. I didn’t realize One Vanderbilt was right there. The one other activity that I wanted to do was Summit, cuz it looked super awesome, but it's not a part of the CityPass plan. I would’ve had to just purchase a ticket for it, and in the long run it wasn’t cost effective on this trip. I will however not hesitate to do it if we ever go there again. As we were walking by and I was taking pictures, W said “I wonder if Anderson Cooper lives there?”, I told him I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure I read somewhere that he didn’t own those properties, and that he wasn't an heir.

willdra · June 17

When we walked into Grand Central Station, W was all “Ok, we saw it, let’s go out”. Uh no. Monsieur. We have never been here, we are going to walk thru this station and see what she’s giving. We did that, then we went to potty. Words of wisdom: potty when you can. You never know when your next opportunity with a clean restroom will be. When W came out, he said there was shady activity in the men’s room. I didn’t doubt it for a second. I also did not want to hear about it. Nobody needed any fresh nightmare fuel. That’s what the bus terminal across the street from the hotel was for.

willdra · June 17

So W finds our route, but somehow he got turned around. I downloaded CityMapper as backup for directions. First W said we couldn’t take the train that we needed from Grand Central, then he said maybe, then no again. I can’t with him.

So I plug in The Met in CityMapper and it gave me very clear instructions. We go to the platform and wait for our train. I show it to W, he downloads CityMapper also. We have a solid plan. CityMapper even tells you how long the train will take to arrive. Couldn’t be easier. So please tell me why W was still trying to take the wrong train? He kept trying to take the train on the other side, which was NOT our train. We established that like 4 times. Every time it came, he said "the train’s coming, let’s get on". Then I'd say "NO! That’s not our train". I swear if this keeps up, my head is gonna look like his by the time we get back to GA, cuz I’m gonna snatch myself baldheaded. Yikes.

I took this picture to distract W, and to show that we were happy, just in case he "accidentally" fell on the subway tracks. Why on earth would I push him???

willdra · June 17

I stopped listening to W, our train arrived, and we got there in 21 minutes. All we had to do was get on the #4 train and exit at 86th Street, and ignore W’s impulses. CityMapper even gave me notifications on my phone when it was time for me to exit the train and it provided turn by turn walking directions.

It was a short walk to The Met from the station. They were very clearly getting ready for the gala, which was the next day. This may have been why it was so hard to get tickets to The Met. I tried to book on their site, and they were sold out. No matter how hard I tried to just buy straight Met tickets, I was getting “get lost boss!” When I checked the calendar and discovered that the Met gala was happening on the next day, I really got concerned that we wouldn’t get in. Eventually I remembered seeing an option to by Met tour tickets in my earlier searches on TripAdvisor, so I said a silent prayer to little 6 pound 7 oz baby Jesus that it was still available. It was! Having Jesus as your BFF is beneficial! The tickets were reasonable too. We did the 2 hour guided walking tour and it was $111 and change total for 2 tickets. As soon as I saw that it was available and reasonable, I booked it with the quickness.

willdra · June 17

When we arrived at The Met, we crossed the street into the building not really knowing what to expect walking in. We went thru security and my bag set off the scanner, so I was sent to the security table to have it “checked”. It was caught in my hair, and I couldn’t take it off to show them. The security guard actually parted his lips and said “Mama you’ve been through enough struggling with your hair and that bag, don’t take it off, you’re good, just go”. Mama? That’s a first. Hopefully it's the last. Security guard embarrassment is not always negative, I guess. I froze, then laughed and said “Thanks!” But then I thought about it later, cuz that’s what my brain does, and I was like hmmm “What if I had something nefarious planned, and that was a tactic”. Spooky.

willdra · June 17

The instructions that we received from TripAdvisor said for us to meet our guide with a WALKS sign by the Pharaoh statue. After we got in, we saw the statue, not the guide. We were early though. We (W) thought our guide was this one lady with a group by the statue, but I kept telling him she didn’t have the sign, and her group looked “different”. He was like “we (you) should ask tho”. So there I go to ask even though I already knew the answer, and she curved me in the most polite way possible. She pointed and said “Umm I think your group may be meeting over there”. What I heard was (get away from me peasant, your commonness is blocking our view). A few minutes later our guide showed up with the sign just like I told W they would, and checked us in. Louis was our guide. He told us that he previously worked at The Met for 2 years, and that he had the inside scoop. We shall see about that.

willdra · June 17

We were provided with the standard museum rules: no touching, no flash, and wear backpacks in the front, or on one shoulder. Got it. Nope we don’t got it. As soon as we walked in, I almost got my face taken off by a backpack. It’s not something that we think about normally, but in tight spaces, those things are dangerous. I was at eye level with this guy’s bp and he turned around very quickly and I had to do one of those Matrix back bending moves to save my face. Rules are rules for a reason.

The little stickers that we got were our actual “ticket”. My sticker kept falling off, like I knew it would. The first time I noticed it, I retraced my steps quickly so as not to lose the group, and I found it stuck to the glass on one of the exhibits. It fell off a few more times after that. Finally I just stuck it back onto the page that had the rest of the ticket on it so I wouldn’t lose it entirely. When we changed galleries, we went as a group, but other people would also crowd through the entrances. It was hard to tell who had a ticket and who didn’t. They never scanned us in or anything. I didn’t want to take the chance tho.

Remember Lucy and Ethel? They’re never far away. Nobody needed them at The Met.

willdra · June 17

A family from Tunisia joined us sometime in the tour process. I think they were so late because they’d gotten lost. When W and I talked about the one part of the museum reminding us of our trip to Versailles, the lady asked where we were from. W said “Atlanta”, to that she was like huh? Then he said “Atlanta, GA?”. Then she said “Ohhh from US?”. W and I looked at each other and said “Yes”, cuz we didn’t really know where she was going with that at first. Then it hit me. I forget how strange it is for Europeans that we travel within our own country. We don’t have France, Greece, Italy, or Germany bordering us, so many Americans unfortunately have never left the US. We are blessed.

As our tour guide was explaining an exhibit, he would stand just right in front of it, so that we could not get a picture without him in it. We had to wait until he was done with his explanation and move then we could take the picture. I don’t know if that was intentional or what, but I do know that it was annoying especially to other museum patrons. When someone would come over to try to take a picture, they would give us a look that said “Will somebody please ask this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle to move???”. We would just give them the “I know right” eye roll.