Today is day one but let me start with Day zero. Yesterday I began my day with a relaxing pedicure followed by a fresh manicure. I ran a couple last minute errands and then headed home. It had been overcast and raining all morning. Now it decided to rain like I’ve never seen before. The 20 minute drive home was treacherous. My rural road was almost impassable and my yard was now a river. First thing I did when I walked in the house was check the basement - all dry.
The skies clear for about 30 minutes and then the rain started up again. We had some of the most amazing lightening. My son can home and we stood on the front porch and enjoyed the storm. Then lightening struck the power lines by our house. Sparks flew from the fuse on the pole - lights out. With this second batch of rain and the water getting even closer to our foundation we checked the basement again. The water had reached our tile around our foundation and was coming in on all sides of the house. 90% of the basement is finished and carpeted. Water was splashing up as we walked. My husband got home and powered up the generator. We Shop-Vac’d the basement by generator power. We carried what we could up to the living room. We finally just had to pull up part of the carpet. Four hours into it, Ameren’s amazing crew replaced the fuse on the pole along with one that blew in the transformer. Great, now we can Shop-Vac to house power.
We worked on the basement until 12:30. I went to bed thoroughly exhausted. Two hours later we were up again to get ready for the airport. We were hesitant about leaving the basement as it was but our son wanted us to go on this trip and already proved that he was more than capable of taking care of the mess.
The early morning storms were light and only delayed our flight by 15 minutes. That time was made up on the second flight. Once in New York the Princess representative was waiting near the baggage area to escort us to the cruise ship. Our luggage went in a big box truck and we traveled in a comfortable tour bus. The check-in process at the ship went so smooth. With their new medallion, check-in is a breeze. We were on the ship before 2:00.
We quickly found our room and started orienting ourselves this huge ship. We happened across a wonderful salad and sandwich shop. I had the shiitake mushroom and oyster sandwich with a Greek salad. My husband had the chicken and tomato. Both were so flavorful and just what we needed after a long day of travel.
Now we started wondering about our luggage. It had not been delivered to our room yet but we were assured that it was just minutes away. Sounds good. Time to head to the top decks and see the ship off. This was so moving. The views were amazing in all directions. The New York skyline is an eclectic variety of new and old along with tall and widespread. We stood on the starboard side and viewed The Statue of Liberty to the left in a haze with the One World Trade Center to the right in a beautiful glow of sunlight. I am not from New York but I can’t help but to feel the souls of 9-11 speaking to me as I remembered that horrible morning.
But back to thinking about our luggage. We checked one more time. You just are not going to believe this one. My luggage was delivered safe and sound. My husband had a message on the phone asking him to come to Four Forward to identify his luggage. What is the worst that could happen??? Keep in mind that we are operating on only 2 hours sleep so we had some crazy thoughts go through our heads. Nope, not this crazy. As the dock hands were transporting the cage that contained at least 13 pieces of luggage it slipped and cage and all ended up in the harbor. They fished out what they could get to. His luggage contained every bit of his clothes, shoes, jackets, etc.
Princess handled it very well but this put quite a damper on our mood - pun intended. Skipping ahead because this is just too unbelievable even for a B movie, we had the most delicious artisan pizza for dinner. Mine was mussels, bay shrimp, roasted garlic, capers, basil and oregano. My husband had the Pizza Hawaiiana.
We explored for a bit and found the Movie Under the Stars - Men in Black International and also the suspended walk path. This ship is just amazing.
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