Christmas 2018 Diary – Day 0

After several of the seemingly longest work weeks ever leading up to the trip, it was finally our last day of work before heading down to NYC. We had our clothes set aside and I successfully got them stuffed into the correct suitcases. Packing is my one true skill!

During check in process we had selected a different checkin time window for the kids (11:00) than we could select for ourselves (9:30). We were deciding which time would be better. After reviewing our eDocuments from checkin we found that the ship boarding time was noon. That meant that if we were there at 9:30, we’d likely have a long wait in the ferry terminal with nothing to do until we could actually board. By getting there at 11:00 we’d have a shorter wait.

I quickly asked around to some veteran cruisers we knew and decided to call customer support to make sure we could use the 11:00 boarding time of the kids instead. The agent said it was fine to go at either time so we decided to target the later time and allow us to have a more leisurely morning. Fighting traffic to get from Queens to the other side of Manhattan was going to take a lot longer at rush hour than it would mid morning.

The Trip Begins

The plan was to jump in the car and start driving as soon as the kids got off the bus. We nearly held to that scheduled, though a last minute work crisis caused us to leave about 30 minutes later than planned. Being rush hour and the Thursday before Christmas, traffic was on the heavy side but quickly cleared out. It was raining off an on but that didn’t seem to slow down the traffic much. While traffic thickened as we got close to the city, at least it wasn’t snowing!

We stopped at a pizza place somewhere in Connecticut for dinner before continuing on to see our family in Queens. We visited quickly with them and dropped off our Christmas presents since we wouldn’t see them again until we got back from the cruise.

My wife’s brother then drove us in our car to the LaGuardia Airport Fairfield Inn hotel where we would be spending the night. He was going to park the car near his house while we were away so we didn’t have to worry about paying for parking.

The Hotel

We eventually found the hotel. While it’s not very far from the airport, getting there was a roundabout process. We ended up driving away from the airport for several miles before taking an exit and essentially backtracking on surface roads to get to the hotel. You could see the airport from the hotel but there just wasn’t a more direct way of getting there.

We quickly unloaded everything we would need for the cruise and left the bag with our NYC items in the car for when we got back. We said our goodbyes and then checked into the hotel.

Checkin was prompt and we got a room on the first floor. While we usually prefer rooms on higher floors, the elevator was out of service so the first floor room was preferable. We’d only have to lug the bags up one floor.

We quickly settled into the room. While the room was average for NYC (i.e. small) we expected it to be larger than the room we’d have on the ship for the next week. The hotel itself was located across from a police training center. While there wasn’t much around, the hotel did offer a shuttle to the airport as well as some places nearby to pick up some last minute supplies if you needed.

We went right to bed hoping to sleep in a little before trekking into the city to start the cruise the next day.