I first thought it was going to be a relatively short post for me, as I'm finally home and getting used to being back in my own apartment. Yeah, Right! This was a great cruise, but we didn't see the wildlife that most of us expect from an Alaskan cruise. Given a choice between this cruise and another cruise through the Norwegian Fjords, the fjords would win out. But that's something I can write about later on.
- - - - - -
I didn't get much sleep the night before disembarkation. RQS asked me when we'd be going under the Golden Gate bridge, and I said that we wouldn't see it when it happened due to San Francisco's fog. And I was right. The fog didn't start lifting until we were ready to get off the ship.
Around 7 am, we left our cabin for the last time and went downstairs for breakfast. We had 1¼ hours to kill before we could get off the ship, so we had one last breakfast in the main dining room. Soon, our number was called, and we proceeded to the gangway to get off the ship for one last time. Once in the terminal, quite a few cruise rookies got in the way of us retrieving our bags and exiting the terminal. Yet, we were off the ship and out of the terminal in less than 45 minutes, and on our way to the airport by 9:30.
- - - - - -
Once at the airport, we had to get our bags checked and boarding passes issued at JetBlue's service desk. Although we had seat assignments made the day before (many thanks to our TA on his vacation!), we still needed new seat assignments because the cane I was using couldn't fold up. (We were booked into an emergency exit row, and the service agent knew we'd have a problem if they saw our canes.) So, he reassigned us to seats 5 rows in back of where we were first seated and 5 rows in front of the seats we originally expected to sit in. This man was extremely helpful, unlike the "Karen" protecting the service agent lanes at JFK - this gives us something more to write about when we send in our complaint letters to JetBlue's corporate offices.
We then went through TSA security with only one minor hitch - even though I have a trusted traveler number, my belt had to come off due to its amount of metal. AARGH! I'll have to look for another belt just to go through airport security one day soon. And then we were in the airport, waiting at the gate for 2 hours. Luckily, we were in the first general boarding group, as people boarding behind us would have to gate check their bags. (RQS gate checked her carry-on anyway, so that she could get on the plane with her remaining bags.)
Eventually, we got on the plane around 12:40, and it would be another 5½ hours before touch down at JFK. We knew that we wouldn't have our bags until 10 pm, and I started to think: What places would be open for late night grub delivery in RQS's section of Queens by the time we got home? That would be a question that could only be answered when our plane touched down and our luggage came off the carousel. Hours later, we had our answer. Our bags were off the carousel around 10 pm (even though the plane arrived at JFK 30 minutes early), and with a ½ mile walk from the terminal to the Airtrain coupled with another 30 minutes in an Uber, we wouldn't be home until after 11 pm.
Now we had a minor problem. All of the late night joints in RQS's neighborhood were closed. Luckily, DoorDash and McDonald's came to the rescue. The clock said midnight in New York, but our bodies said it was 9 pm in San Francisco. By the time we finished our burgers, we were ready to crash for the night, as we had no more energy to do anything....
No comments:
Post a Comment