{"id":1084,"date":"2015-05-11T16:34:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T16:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelwithus.us\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2015-05-11T19:47:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T19:47:15","slug":"epic-fail-captain-boyfriend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/?p=1084","title":{"rendered":"Epic fail, Captain Boyfriend!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_20150510_063524209_HDR\"<\/a>You may recall that Mary’s Captain told us\u00a0 yesterday that we would be sailing under the\u00a0Verrazano\u2013Narrows Bridge<\/a> at 5:50 am this morning.\u00a0 He pointed out that this would really be 6:50 am for our bodies because we were to turn our clocks back an hour at 2 am.\u00a0 Mary set her phone clock back when we went to sleep around midnight and she set the alarm for\u00a0 5:30.\u00a0 We both woke up around 5 and were out on deck by 5:35 am.<\/p>\n

There were lots of people on deck lining the railings but we managed to find a place to squeeze in. Because of the F word, we couldn’t really see much – it was very thick – I believe Mary said the news was calling it Fogapolypse. It seemed like we should be nearing the time to go under the Verrazano Bridge and Mary asked someone, “Do you know if we’ve gone under the bridge yet?” but the person she asked didn’t know. I asked the man to my left and he said he didn’t know either. It seemed that most of us had just arrived and had no clue where the ship was or what was going on. At one point everyone on our side of the ship left and started running to the port side so I figured I would run over there too. Why not? To be one with the crowd, I guess. There was nothing to see, however, so I went back to Mary.\u00a0 We had a little discussion with the man on my left. We seemed to be moving very slowly and at one point Mary thought we were moving backwards. So I just started walking around asking anyone who I thought looked like they spoke English (there were a lot of French and German people on the ship) if we had passed under the bridge yet. The man from my left followed me the whole time, which Mary and I thought was kind of cute. Finally I found a woman who said we had passed under the bridge almost an hour earlier!!!\u00a0 What? Thanks a lot, Captain Boyfriend! We thought that maybe we had been confused by the time change, but then so was almost everyone else out there. Captain Boyfriend made a point of saying it would really be 6:50 and we have proof because Mary recorded most of the Captain’s announcements.<\/p>\n

I’m going to interrupt myself to say that today has been a day of screaming babies. Happy Mother’s Day! There is one screaming right now on our Jet Blue airplane, there was a little boy with an amazing set of lungs on the E train on the way to JFK, and we were treated to a screaming little girl this morning in the breakfast room at the Staybridge Suites. Mary just commented that she will be glad to get home where only our cats are screaming. And they will definitely be screaming.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the woman who got to see the Bridge as we sailed under it pulled out her camera and showed me pictures and it did look amazing, like the ship barely cleared it. I also asked the woman about the Statue of Liberty, which was why everyone ran to the port side of the ship, and she informed me that no one was able to see it through the fog. So that I can’t blame the Captain for, but giving us the wrong time for the Bridge Sailing Underneathing, I think that’s a transgression worth breaking up over. Mary, though, says she’s just highly disappointed in Captain Boyfriend but he is still her boyfriend! I guess I shouldn’t be so annoyed as I am also sometimes the beneficiary of that generous attitude.<\/p>\n

As we were looking at the pictures of the ship passing under the bridge, we realized that we were actually docked in Brooklyn but there was so much fog we couldn’t tell at first.\u00a0\u00a0 We went inside to have breakfast and snagged a table by the window. We got all excited when we saw a seagull, as we had seen no animal life since last Sunday. The view was of some greenery across the water. \"IMG_20150510_075125177_HDR\"<\/a>Then Mary and this woman at another table kept getting all excited about this building they were seeing. There was a white boxy looking building on the edge of the greenery and I couldn’t really understand what they were so excited about so I kept asking, “That building over there?” and Mary would say, “Yes, that building.” Finally I just gave up trying to understand. Then, about 15 minutes later, the entire Manhattan skyline suddenly appeared and I realized they had been spotting the top of a skyscraper floating in and out of the fog. (Note from Mary: I think it was the new World Trade Center…?) And I could see some art in the greenery area and realized that we were looking at Governor’s Island. So, even though we missed the bridge, watching the city emerge from the fog was pretty great in itself. (Note from Mary: I ran around, madly snapping pics – you can see them here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The minute I realized we were docked I turned my phone on and started trying to figure out how we were going to spend our day. It was very exciting to be able to use my phone again after seven days of no phone – we kept our phones in airplane mode the whole time we were on the ship because calls were $5.95 a minute and I didn’t want to have to pay that should anyone happen to call us. We really wanted to get to New Rochelle and St.John’s, Wilmot Episcopal Church this morning where our friend Jennie is the Reverend. We were in New York in September to see her get ordained and we were able to go to her first service at St. John’s and we really enjoyed it and wanted to go again. But it would have been very difficult to get there by 10:30 am and we had no idea how long it would take to get through immigration once we were off the ship. We had chosen self debarkation which meant we had to carry our own bags off the ship but could get off anytime we wanted to. This seemed like a no brainer to us, but then we didn’t have a lot of luggage. Once I accepted the reality that we were not going to make it to New Rochelle, I started looking into getting a hotel for the day as our flight home didn’t leave until 8:45 pm this evening.<\/p>\n

We had to vacate our room at 8:30 am so we went back up to the King’s Court with our luggage and the bottle of champagne we were given on embarkation and never drank, and I started making phone calls. There is a smartphone app called Hotel Tonight that lists reduced prices for hotels at the last minute. On that app I found a few hotels for under $110 and I also checked with IHG whose properties I try to stay at as much as possible because they have a great loyalty program. The Staybridge Suites Times Square, where we stayed in September, and which we loved, had rooms for $109 so I called and asked if there was any way to get into a room in the morning. The woman I spoke with said that checkout was at 11 and they could put a rush on cleaning a room and could store our luggage but couldn’t promise what time we could get into a room. I didn’t want to pay for a hotel for only 2 hours like we did three weeks ago. I called at least four other hotels and they either didn’t have rooms available early or if they did have them available they wouldn’t let us in them. We could have just sat in the public rooms of the ship for another few hours, but we were eager to move on to the next part of our day, whatever that would be, so we went ahead and left the ship, still not knowing exactly where we were going.<\/p>\n

There were huge lines of people waiting for taxis and we were the only people who walked out of the cruise terminal with our luggage. I knew the bus stop was about a 10 minute walk away and it wasn’t too hard to find since there was really only one way to walk. The other way led into the ocean. As we were walking, we ran across a young woman who asked if we had just gotten off the ship. We said we had. She was very excited because she had just moved to Red Hook and when she woke up this morning there was this huge ship that she could see right outside her window. She said her friends had asked her if she could see the ocean from her apartment and she said no, but this morning she could see this huge ship. We chatted with her for a few minutes and I asked if we were headed in the right direction for the bus (we were) and then we continued on our way. The bus stop was easy to find. We had to wait about 20 minutes but it was a pleasant enough wait. I had the champagne in a shopping bag but it was heavy and kind of a pain in the ass and I had talked about giving it to someone and said to Mary, “We should have given to that girl!” (the one who just moved to Red Hook.) A few minutes later we saw her coming\u00a0 back from looking at the cruise ship. We waved to each other and Mary said “I’ll go ask her if she wants the champagne.” She walked over and then came back looking a little distressed and said to me, “She’s sober one year. Perhaps it’s not the best idea to offer alcohol to strangers. She said thank you, though!”<\/p>\n

The bus came and we paid with our Metro Card that we had saved from September and loaded another $10 onto three weeks ago. The bus was blissfully uncrowded which is really a bonus when you have a big suitcase. We got off right in front of the Brooklyn Tabernacle where families were arriving for church and then we walked a couple blocks to the subway and got on the C train heading into Manhattan. I still didn’t know if we would be able to get a hotel room and I was also looking into luggage storage and wondering if we should get off at Penn Station or Times Square. Eventually we decided on Times Square because we have come to know that area well and we decided to go to the Staybridge Suites and see what they could do for us.<\/p>\n

The young woman at the front desk said that they had already had some checkouts and she could expedite cleanup and she was sure she could get us in a room before noon. “Do you ever drink champagne?” I asked her.\u00a0 She seemed surprised by this question and wasn’t sure how to answer and I believe Mary explained that we had this bottle of champagne from the cruise ship that we wanted to give away. The young woman said, “Well, I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy champagne but if someone gave me some, I would certainly drink it.” I held up the bottle and she took it and seemed quite pleased with it. The easiest way to book the room was to book it on my phone and then give her my name and voila, there the reservation was on her computer. I gave her my credit card and she said she would call my cell phone when the room was ready, but meanwhile, since they were still serving breakfast she invited us to help ourselves, and then saluted us with her new bottle of champagne when we headed into the breakfast area. We chose to only have drinks since we’d already had breakfast on the ship and we sat down next to our first screaming child of the day. As the screaming got louder and more intense, we moved to another part of the lobby and busily began downloading podcasts onto our phones. The Staybridge Suites Time Square has very fast internet and that was very exciting after our week of very slow and limited internet. Within a half hour the young lady found us and handed us keys. I asked her if she had a newspaper and she handed me a Sunday New York Times and I said, “You are really making my day!”\u00a0 (She was very cute. Perhaps I was flirting a tiny bit.)<\/p>\n

Our room was on the 29th floor and had a really great view, much better than the view last time we stayed at the Staybridge Suites. We could see the river and also a basketball court that was far enough away that the people playing looked like little toy figures, but I enjoyed watching them play. We each had our own bed and I settled in with my New York Times and Mary called her mother to say Happy Mother’s Day. I forgot to mention yesterday that in the afternoon, while we were watching Pride and Prejudice, a Coast Guard helicopter landed on the ship to evacuate a patient who needed medical attention that the ship’s medical center could not provide. I thought this was a normal thing when people get sick at sea, and I was impressed, but I guess it’s not so normal, because Mary’s mother told us she had seen it on the news in Portland. I asked if she was worried that it was one of us but she was not worried because the news said it was a 39 year old male suffering heart and kidney failure. He was flown to a hospital in Boston. I hope he is okay.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, this morning in the King’s Court Buffet I saw the actor who played Mr. Bennett, and then as we got off the ship the man who played Mr. Darcy was right in front of us. I tapped him on the shoulder and told him we really enjoyed the performance and he said, “Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Then as we went through immigration, which was very fast, we saw the rest of the actors waiting for Mr. Darcy, who, for some reason was being held up in immigration. I walked over to them and told them we really enjoyed the show and they seemed very pleased to hear it.<\/p>\n

Okay, back to the Staybridge Suites. Around noon we got hungry and we knew exactly where to go for lunch. Mary wanted a slice from the dollar slice stand she loves on the corner of 9th Avenue and 40th Street. I wanted a salad and greek yogurt parfait from Au Bon Pain inside the Port Authority. First we got Mary’s slice – right before we ordered a man approached us and said, “If you could help me, I only want one thing: I want a slice of pizza.” “You want a slice of pizza?” I asked, because I often mishear things. “Yes,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Alright then. We will get you a slice of pizza,” I said. “What kind do you want?” This seemed to surprise him and he said, “Pepperoni or mushroom.” Mary ordered two pepperonis and was told that her only choice was cheese, so that’s what she got and we handed the man his pizza and felt very good about ourselves, although really, how hard is it to buy a guy a dollar slice of pizza? Mary gobbled down her pizza pretty quickly, though she said it was not as good as last time. Then we headed to Au Bon Pain where I bought my lunch and then we went back to the hotel room and I ate there and continued reading my New York Times. It was a lovely day outside – I thought it was; Mary thought it rather muggy and unpleasant – and we were in New York and there were shows I wanted to see at both MOMA and The Met and we could even get tickets to a play if we wanted, but the truth was neither one of us really wanted to leave the hotel room. This felt wrong to me but I eventually convinced myself it was okay and we only left the room again to go get me a New York pretzel. On that outing there was a hotel employee down in the lobby playing the guitar and he did his Sammy Davis Jr. impression for us, and then, when Mary tipped him for storing our bags, he said he would serenade us as we left the hotel so we walked very slowly since we were at the door when he made that offer. He did follow us with his guitar onto the street and then he asked where we were going. He told us there was this great pizza place – “not the one on the corner, that one is disgusting. I mean it’s okay if you’re drunk” – that was his description of Mary’s beloved $1 slice stand! We didn’t take his pizza advice and went off to get my pretzel which was stale and disappointing but that did not stop me from eating the whole thing. And so we whiled away the afternoon and very soon it was time to head to the airport.<\/p>\n

We had discussed whether to take a car, for around $80, or the subway\/Airtrain for $15, and had decided on the subway, thinking it might be faster than a car and definitely cheaper – plus New York cab drivers mostly scare me. I think they drive a little crazy. We were a little later than we probably should have been leaving the hotel and it seemed to take forever for the E train to come and when it did come it came on the other side of the track, which was confusing, but a woman assured us it would get us to JFK. It turned out to be a local train which made it slower and then it was slower still because they were doing work on the tracks or the tunnels or something. I started to become very anxious about missing our flight. At one point Mary said, “I guess we should have taken this tunnel work into account when we were doing our planning” I said I had been unaware of tunnel work but she said, “Remember this morning how we went slowly through the tunnels and there were bright lights? That was because of tunnel work.” News to me, but she may have told me. This morning I said, “Oh look, that’s Governor’s Island!” and she said, “I just told you that two minutes ago.” She has been doing this to me for our entire relationship and she feels much better now that I am doing it to her too, though I find it a bit concerning.<\/p>\n

We were late enough that in my anxiety I began behaving like a crazy woman and was treated like one by the employee who tried to help me when I was trying to figure out how to buy the AirTrain tickets, but in the end we had time to spare. I really like getting around using public transportation, but it has been a bit rough this trip every time we’ve done it. The worst is in New York where the majority of the subway stations are not accessible which means I have to carry my heavy suitcase up and down stairs. My back complains that it is way too old for this, and I mourn the passing of my youth. Well, my Jet Blue flight map tells me that we are over North Dakota right now. I think we will be home in a little over three hours. There are still things I haven’t written about, like my day in Portofino with my Dad and Iris, and our adventures in getting from Gatwick to the Staybridge Suites Vauxhall. I hope I might write about those things while they are still somewhat fresh in my mind, but it’s also very likely I will go back to the real world tomorrow and find I don’t make the time to write. We shall see.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may recall that Mary’s Captain told us\u00a0 yesterday that we would be sailing under the\u00a0Verrazano\u2013Narrows Bridge at 5:50 am this morning.\u00a0 He pointed out that this would really be 6:50 am for our bodies because we were to turn our clocks back an hour at 2 am.\u00a0 Mary set her phone clock back when … Continue reading Epic fail, Captain Boyfriend!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-april-2015-italy-england-qm2","category-everything","category-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}