The Itinerary

The Itinerary
THE ITINERARY

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

June 3, The Queen Mary 2 to New York City

Wednesday, June 3 - Day 119 - The Queen Mary 2 to New York City 

During the night we continued up the channel to New York City after taking on our pilot. WOW, 4:00AM comes awfully early! Why, you may ask. are we up so early....well, to see the QM2 pass under the Verazano Narrows Bridge with only 14 feet to spare and enter New York Harbor!

We are really dragging, but we make it onto the Observation Deck on 11 in time to watch passing under the bridge about 4:30AM...it even looks tight! As we turn the corner into the harbor, we see beautiful New York City all dressed in its night lights! It is quite a sight, spanning more than 180 degrees from Staten Island, the commercial docks, up the Hudson River with its bridges, sparkling Manhattan Island with the bright beacon that is the new World Trade Center building, the East River with the Brooklyn Bridge and finally Brooklyn with just the tiniest hint of a golden red sunrise. We stay out on deck nearly an hour....what a fabulous scene! Sunrise over New York City!











Back in the room we warm up; it was a bit airish out on the open deck. Breakfast is from 6:30 to 8AM this morning and we are there about a 6:45AM with the rest of the Queens Grill passengers. Service, needless to say, runs a little slow, but that is OK as we can’t leave the ship until around 8:15AM or later.

The Captain comes on the PA at 7AM and welcomes us to New York and tells us the ship is cleared and the self service passengers can now leave. After we finish eating, we go back to the room and get our cameras for one more round of photos from Deck Eleven. At the terminal entrance, there is a long line of people waiting for taxis and not a taxi in sight! We stand and watch for a few minutes and see three taxis show up...getting away from the terminal is going to take forever at this rate.



About 8:20 we head on down to the gangway (that was the time we were suppose to be able to leave). We don’t like going to the Lounge because it is just that much more hassle with the luggage. So we just wait in the room until the printed time, which so far for Queens Grill has been earlier than the vacate time for the room.

In the lobby, there is a huge line trying to leave...so far they have only called the self service and Queens Grill passengers and it is already a zoo! Lots of people handling their own luggage on this cruise. In the terminal it is even worse. We have a bit of a hassle finding our bags and getting a porter. Once that is done, he gets us in a line for immigration and we think we will be there for an hour or more, there are so many ahead of us. Wrong...there is a separate line with two officers for those of us with porters and we move right along. The officer checks our passports and takes our customs card and we are done, the porter takes us to the Taxi line and suggests we use a fixed price limo for $41 as it will be much faster. We agree and are number two in that line while there are at least 40 people waiting for the regular taxis which are still coming very, very slowly, one every 2 to 3 minutes. By 9:15 we are on our way to the hotel! Worth every penny of the $41 dollars for the private hire.

We get to the to the Wall Street Inn just before 10AM and find our room is actually ready...wonderful! This is a nice little hotel just off Wall Street near the Battery. We are pleased with what we see. It is nicely appointed and seems to be in a very "happening" area.


Carolyn gets the luggage stowed and things in the room set up for our two day stay. We check email and reserve our ticket for the 9/11 Memorial for 11AM tomorrow. By now it is after 11:00, the sun is out and we are hungry! Dick’s knee is really hurting him after dealing with the luggage. Carolyn’s are achy and stiff from the cold, damp morning air, so we decide to find lunch and take a feel better pill. There is a pedestrian street right behind the hotel that is packed full of eateries of every kind, We chose a crepery that is connected to a restaurant and have a delightful, filling lunch.


Food and painkillers improve our mood, so we decide to walk over to the Battery and catch the Staten Island Ferry for a nice view of the Harbor and the Queen Mary 2 on this sunny afternoon. It is probably the best harbor ride outside of the Star Ferry in Hong Kong and it is free! It takes about an hour and a half to do the round trip and we enjoy the views and the people watching! After that we walk around looking at the neat mix of old and new buildings in New York's lower end. Some of the old buildings have mid=1800s dates on them and one date to the time of the Revolution.










By 4PM we are done in and limp back to the hotel. Carolyn gets cleaned up while Dick goes back over to the food area behind the hotel and gets us pizza for dinner. By 6:30PM we are fed, medicated and ready for bed. Four AM is way too early to get up!!! Hopefully a good, long, nights sleep will improve our knees. We have several things we want to do tomorrow.






1 comment:

  1. Hi Carolyn,
    I have just caught up with your wonderful Blog. We have been home 3 weeks now and have been so busy. I loved reading about your time in Myanmar, Seychelles, Mauritius and Cape Town and also your time in Scotland. We stayed in Grantham on Spey at the Craiglynne Hotel way back in the 90's! I also enjoyed reading about your two cruises on the QM2. We have decided to do a Transatlantic on her next year from New York to London after our Marina Cruise finishes in NYC. We had a great 32 days on the Ocean Princess and all the tours we organized were a success. Jennie

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