Late departure from NYC - Washy Washy!

Day 1   Sunday, January 20, 2019    New York City

With a stateroom at the very front of our ship, we had a perfect view out our window as we sailed down the Hudson River and out to sea. It was finally a beautiful scene after a LONG confusing day.

We discovered early in the morning that I did not have my credit card. Darn! I must have left it at the Room Service restaurant. I phoned them, but no answer. According to the their webpage, they were to open on that Sunday morning at 11 am. We could board the ship at 10:30, but I really wanted to retrieve my card, so I walked over to the restaurant to wait until someone would arrive to get them set up to open. I figured if they would be opening at 11:00, someone would arrive an hour ahead of time. But I stood there in the cold, waiting and waiting right up until 11:00, and no one ever came. When I would try calling their number, I could actually hear their phone ringing just inside at the hostess's desk.

I finally called to cancel my card, and we left our room, walked up a couple blocks, and caught an Uber for a very short ride to the ship. The line was super-long. We soon heard that boarding was delayed because they needed to sanitize the entire ship, due to hundreds from the previous cruise having come down with norovirus.
What a huge crowded confusion it was! The line from outside took forever, but even once inside, we just stood in the same place in a massive crowd for a couple hours. Eventually, a line began to move slowly, but it was everyone for himself from the back, to actually enter the roped-off line. We finally squeezed in and proceeded up through the line and checked in. Our agent did not give us our proper key cards, so we had to go back and get new ones when the scanner did not recognize our cards.

On board, the rooms were, of course, not ready, so we made our way to the 16th-level buffet. Guess what? The other 4200 passengers were trying to do the same thing. The elevators to ascend from level 7 to 16 were jam packed, so we ended up walking up those 9 floors. Pant pant... Then, the lines at the buffet were what you would expect, plus we experienced one effect of the virus problem -- passengers could not serve themselves; staff had to serve everything. It remained like this until only three days before the end of the cruise. "Washy-washy" took on a whole new literal meaning.

There were essentially no available seats in the buffet either, but we did finally find two chairs at a big round table and could sit down to eat. At least the view of the Hudson from back there was nice!

We later went to the elevator area on our 14th floor, sat down, and waited about an hour until we were told our room was ready. We liked our room with its forward view - at that time, the view was still just the tall buildings of NYC. We were supposed to have departed at 3 pm, but by now it was about 5:30 and dark outside. We wished we could shower, but we did not yet have our luggage. And, the room did not have all the usual items that a ready room would have. We knew it was because they had needed to sanitize everything.

At 6:30, 3½ hours late, the Escape backed out and we headed down the Hudson. We stayed in our room to watch, not only because we had a big window facing forward, but also because this huge ship did not have a forward lounge as had all our previous ships. It was one of our disappointments in the way they had laid out this ship.

It was spectacular sailing down the Hudson, getting to see all the pretty lights of NYC and New Jersey. And of course Our Lady of Liberty. We were glad the lights were shining on her, given the government shutdown being over a month long by then. By the way, that black line in the center of the photo was the ship's line from the front mast down to the bow. The navigation deck was immediately above us on the 15th level; if we looked up from our window, we could see the navigation team in there!

Ahead was the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which we would go under as we had on our 1st Norwegian cruise in 2012. It connects Brooklyn and Staten Island. Once under it and past Coney Island lights to our left, it was just black ahead. So, we headed off to dinner at one of the main dining rooms called Savor. We had the expected long wait, so we ordered shots of booze from the bar right there. After dinner, we got to watch Howling at the Moon Dualing Pianos, in the Headliner's Comedy Club. It was fabulous, and we ended up watching them three or four other nights during our cruise. Two fellows and a gal played two grand pianos and the drums, performing wild and fun songs non-stop for four hours. One of the three would occasionally take breaks, which meant they kept going non-stop. They played only crowd requests, and they were fabulous performers and entertainers. (Before I forget, let me mention two of our favorites - Piano Man, with the old lady holding the harmonica, and I Got You Babe, with Steven hilariously imitating both Sonny's and Cher's voices.)

After dinner, my suitcase was at the room, but not Janet's. It still wasn't delivered by 11 pm, so we just went on to bed. But then came a knock on the door at 11:15, and she finally got her suitcase. We pretty much took all the delays in stride, knowing they were "fighting" a potentially dangerous situation to keep us healthy, but overall, we sure heard a lot of nasty griping from others all over the ship.