25 June 2013 New York

It is Thursday morning and we set our alarm so we would be able to see our sail into New York.  We were not disappointed. We sailed up the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty was so much more than I had imagined.  It was not light, she was indeed beautiful and I can understand the Americans and how they feel about her I was indeed taken myself.  We watched the sailing in, had our showers had breakfast to be in readiness for our tour which was booked for 9.10 am.  We had to be in the Princess Theatre by 8.00, quite a lot of delay, no tours had even left by then.  The hold up of course is immigration which we expected but not to this degree. Anyway we were called about 9.00 but when we got outside the lines were very long, anyway stroke of luck this lady pulled a couple of people from the end of our line out to be fast tracked so I very quickly got under the railing without her seeing me of course grabbed Sam who was extremely worried we would be on the fast track to San Quentin, a number of others followed and hey presto we were thru onto our bus, our guide was a very lovely fellow, we took the bus to the ferry which took us down the Hudson and then on to Downtown NY, through the start of Broadway and onto the 9/11 site.  NY is absolutely nothing as I imagined I thought it would be overwhelming but it was not it was quite a lovely city I was indeed impressed, mind you your view of anywhere is what you see through your guide.  The 9/11 site was huge and they are still working on it, the two fountains, one in the place of each building are amazing and the architect for these must have been a very clever person all I can say is they are perfect and what they have done there, well what do I say. It certainly gave us all a lump in our hearts we were with Barbara and Garry a lovely couple from our table from Ballarat we said how fortunate to have been able to spend such a lovely day with one another.

We were delivered back to the ship so we had a bit of lunch and a cup of tea, this was pretty much my first day up and I was still way from well but you cannot keep  a good woman down, I had a 10 min power nap and then the four of us headed out towards Time Square and Central Park we managed to do all this in about 4 hours, all walking and arrived back to the ship by 5.20 we had to be back on board by 5.30 for our sail away, mind you by then I was pretty much comatose.  We met up with everyone and they had had lovely days as well, unfortunately though some of the people who had not booked a tour did not get through immigration until about 12.00 very big shame, they do make it difficult, at least in India the officials came on board prior and did all the paperwork and face to face with everyone on board, anyway no one let it ruin their day.   Sam and Garry did not take too much in they were waylaid by two ladies in Time Square who only had their G-strings on but they were painted, quite a bevy of people around them, Barbara and I were waiting for them and I looked over and said to Barbara look at those two everyone else had dispersed and only Sam and Garry still admiring the painted ladies, I don’t know what is it with men and breasts, painted not painted, gracious me.  Gorgeous day and we said one could come back and spend about 10 days or so in a hotel and just go for it, see it all. 

I will close on that note hope all is well, we have quite a few days at sea now until we arrive in Antigua.  All the best Love Sabine and Sam  XXX