USA! We made it! Remember when I said a lot of stuff was going to happen today? Well, it did. For starters, we had immigration. Normally when you travel to the US from another country you have to go through customs and declare things you bought. Since the ship goes in and out of the country weekly this is all taken care of at one time…all of the 1200 crew…today. It started at 7:45 with US crew and crew that were signing off and then went alphabetical by last name. So it was us and the 180 crew that finished their contracts and signed off early in the morning.
It probably took until about 10:30 before we heard the announcement for a handful of remaining crew to go do customs with the added hint that they were holding up everything that was yet to come.
After immigration finished they immediately began the crew safety drill. It happens once a cruise and for whatever reason that meant it happened today. This means some random scenario happens and the crew reacts. Today it was a fake fire and then eventually the call to abandon ship. So, we can leave now…right? No. Another thing that had to happen was the Coast Guard came and tested the crew and ship…this may have been why we had a drill today instead of later in the cruise.
Finally around 11:30 we received the “all crew dismissed” and headed for the exit. Surprise! There were 190 new crew who had been waiting for the drill to end so they could come on, and this meant their luggage had to go through the x-ray. So, crew slowly started to gather to get off the ship and new crew slowly came on. Luckily they paused to let us off before continuing bringing people on.
Around 12:30 we were in New York! All we really had time to do was walk around a bit. We went to Times Square and 30 Rock. Bought a bunch of stuff at a drug store, including a Neti Pot…which I tried for the first time later that day. More news on how it worked tomorrow.
While walking back to the ship we saw Bill Hader from SNL. I didn’t want to seem like a crazy fan so I said “hey” and he smiled and said “hey.”
I’ll sum up the rest of the day being on the ship with this: Americans are not classy.
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