Land again! Thankfully, we had a pretty good Atlantic crossing. With a 7am arrival into a Boston where the higher buildings were still shrouded in mist, it looked to be yet another bright day.
A light breakfast and on the way along our (long) corridor, I noted that the position of the wireless router was almost at the front stairwell and I had a mini brain wave, (considering our trivia successes, this shouldn’t really have come as a huge surprise) thinking that maybe much of our internet drop out hiccups may have been due to our cabin location.
Whilst waiting for our scheduled time (we are not queue jumpers…) I switched on the lap top and once fired up, took it out along the corridor to the stairwell lobby and sure enough, I managed to not only connect, but the signal didn’t keep dropping out either, so for the first time since leaving Southampton, I managed to not only upload the blog, but also actually read the essential emails. From now on, it looks as though I may as well leave the cabin to get a decent connection.
We knew that US immigration was going to be busy and we weren’t wrong.
Our face to face time was 8am in the Vista lounge (which for those who are unaware, is at the very back of the ship) so we headed down to the Vista just before 8am; obviously, there would be a queue. So we walked towards front of the ship to find the end of it.
On the starboard side, we walked past the photo desk, the photo gallery, Jammers nightclub (empty as usual), Magnums bar, the art gallery, into the atrium, port side, through the atrium, out the other side, past the Wheelhouse bar to the theatre entrance at the front of the ship, back across to the starboard side and back to the Wheelhouse bar again! At last, the end of the queue - which you may well have gathered by now, extended the full length of the ship. Fortunately, the 8 US immigration officials were really cracking on and putting it into perspective, the Dubai immigration took well over an hour to process our 15 metre queue in 2012. We were out, having had our face to face interview and passport stamped in 40 minutes from joining the queue. No forms to fill in, but for future cruisers, unlike at the airport where everything is on line, at a face to face on the ship, you do need to present a copy of your ESTA (electronic) visa. No fingerprints or eye scans either and we assume the ship’s security procedures are such that any passengers failing to return, would be reported to the authorities, before the ship was allowed to leave.
Anyway, suitably processed, we dumped our passports back into our safe (though photo ID should be carried anyway, particularly as some credit card purchases require photo ID) and headed back to the theatre to pick up our tour stickers.
We had opted for the ship’s ‘Ho-Ho’ trolley tour, thinking that we’d be processed earlier than doing our own thing (wrong!) and it would save us the $15 return shuttle to the centre of town. We didn’t have to wait long to be called, as the Ho-Ho was running to a 15 minute schedule anyway.
We handed over our Princess tickets and received a bright green ‘Old Town Trolley Tours’ sticker. It was explained that the company ran several trolleys but to get back to the ship, we’d need to get on the correct trolley, one displaying the ‘Green Stickers Only’ notice. The route for the ship was not the normal daily one, with 7 stops and the 8th back at the ship.
Our driver was Gordie, who proved to be excellent. Very informative and good humoured and although he did the stops in sequence, he didn’t stick rigidly to the mapped route! We learned about the Boston Tea Party and some of the history of Boston (which is a large city with 6 million inhabitants) with much of the land reclaimed. The history of the reclamation was interesting too. Boston abounds with excellent, very well kept parks and thankfully, graffiti was minimal.
One of the largest projects was shifting what was an ugly, high level, freeway, underground. The cost had/has spiralled from $3b to $20b and the land previously occupied by ugly pylons was now yet another impressive park. The fancy looking bridge (pic) is part of this reconstruction. Boston is an extremely pleasant city with history. Lots of ‘oldest’ or ‘first’ in the USA and if Gordie’s attitude was anything to go by, Bostonians are very proud of their city.
I certainly knew nothing about ‘The Boston Tea Party’ until today. One of the more interesting monuments was the six glass towers. (pic) These represented those who died in the six German concentration camps and etched on to the glass are the prison numbers of the millions who died. Having seen the setting for ‘Cheers’ (pic), the Bunker Hill monument, Fenway Park stadium, home of the Boston Red Sox and the Naval museum, we opted to hop off at stop 7, opposite the harbour and the entrance to Quincy Market.
The main building in the market area (pic) houses the food hall. Talk about busy! Lined on both sides by various food outlets, the largest queue seemed to be at the Japanese food stall, with the guys behind the counter knocking out food at an amazing rate. We made our way to the central area and then upstairs hoping to find a rest room, but we were knocked out to find that just about everyone sitting and standing around eating, appeared to be Japanese or at least, Asian.
We eventually found the rest rooms down below, but the queue was too long for comfort, so we passed on that. Running the gauntlet of the second half of the hall, we went outside and back to a tiny shopping area (just two shops!) but with clean toilets and no queue. (For future visitors, look for the Newbury [sp?] comic shop to find them.)
Back into the second hall (pic) which was mainly tourist purchases but it did have a small coffee stall. We had a fresh muffin and a piece of lemon and coconut slice, but what I really wanted, was a lobster roll! Back into the central hall again and several stalls were offering lobster in various forms, scallops wrapped in bacon, fish skewers etc., but we thought the prices overall were rather high for a market, so I opted to economise and do without.
We then strolled down to the harbour front and back, just in time to catch the return trolley car to the ship.
Although only one stop, the poor driver had to put up with one female passenger who wouldn’t stop talking to him, preventing him from doing his commentary. Most other passengers who were on the trolley before we boarded were complaining about her, so fortunately, we only had the one stop!
Back on board about 2pm, the poor staff (all of them) were still involved in their very comprehensive US Coastguard safety drills and health department inspections/examinations, so none managed to get ashore until about 2:30 or later and they had to be back on board 3:30pm. Fortunately the ship passed with flying colours as usual.
Just for a change, we decided to eat at the outdoor grill bar on deck 15, but that was probably poor timing on our part, as it appeared that they only had one very junior cook looking after it – and he seemed totally incapable of dealing with more than two burger orders at a time, even though each burger took about five minutes to cook. Anyway, when it eventually arrived, we found that either the burger bar no longer puts salad with them, or, it was only because of the crew drill, so Paula had to nip to the buffet for her greenery. I suffered by doing without salad with mine. Do chopped gherkins count as green veg? I presume they do.
Sailaway was about 4:30pm and the sea mist was approaching fast. Now many of you will have seen the YouTube clips of aircraft skimming the perimeter fence alongside a beach, just over the heads of the sunbathers.
Try being on the upper decks of a tall cruise ship, in fog, with aircraft coming in overhead heading for two runways a matter of yards away! Miraculously, holes appeared in the fog, (spooky!) just as we were turning around and the pic has not been enhanced or photo-shopped in any way. Now as the sixth largest city in the USA, as you can well imagine, the airport is somewhat busy, with large aircraft landing every couple of minutes, plus small aircraft landing onto a smaller runway, plus aircraft taking off at 90 degrees.
This proved extremely entertaining for the passengers (not sure about incoming aircraft passengers and crew) and arguably, one of the best sailaways anywhere, but not for the scenery or a local band on the quayside.
We even didn’t turn up for afternoon quiz thank goodness, or we would have missed the above.
Whilst yet another good dinner was concluding (see the trilogy of meats pic earlier in the blog), Sarah’s boys started their extremely popular Dixieland set in the atrium. Decks five, six, seven and eight seemed to be packed with appreciative passengers.
On then to the theatre to ‘Savannah Jack’. In Irish terms, they could be called a show band. Drums, lead guitar, bass guitar vocalist and one playing country fiddle or guitar, but from Nashville. Good harmonies and generally, a good show. Asking the audience to shout out their favourite singers, totally off the cuff, they did Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash (plus a couple of others) and to great cheers, someone yelled out ‘Dolly Parton!’ They obliged and did ‘9 to 5’… without batting an eyelid.
With the fog horns going not long after leaving Boston, maybe our arrival into New London, Connecticut at 10am tomorrow will be a little late, but at least the clocks don’t change.
A nice place Boston and somewhere that needs a bit more than a day to do it justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment