Our flight on Friday morning (March 7th) was at around 9:00 am out of Indy. So we drove down the night before to do the Park Sleep Fly thing (you stay in the hotel the night before and then you leave your car at the hotel while you are gone and get free parking). So Stian had his first hotel experience.
The next morning we got up and headed over to the airport. We had originally had a direct flight from Indy to La Guardia, but the airline changed it to having a connection in Cleveland with a 30 minute layover. The schedule also had us landing at La Guardia at about 12:45, the boat was to leave Bayonne at 4:00 pm. So we were to have about 3 hours to collect our luggage and make it across Manhattan to catch the boat. This schedule had me nervous as I just didn't see how this was going to work.
So we start the day with a 30 minute delay in our flight leaving Indy. Remember, we only had a 30 minute layover in Cleveland. Stian did really well on this flight, even though I was a wreck. So we land in Cleveland and I step off the airplane (leaving Kris to negotiate all of our gate checked carry-on luggage, and I'm carrying Stian) to hear the final boarding call for our flight, which was about 30 gates away. So I start to walk as fast as I possibly can carrying a baby to our gate. I get there and ask them to hold the plane while Kris gets there. They do and we make it on the plane (we weren't the only ones they ended up holding the plane for). So we get on the plane, get everyone in, and push off from the gate. Now this was Friday. You may have heard about the weather they had in Cleveland the next day when they got 20 inches of snow. The snow was just starting when we were there. So we get out to the tarmac and proceed to sit there for an hour and a half. Everything is slowed down because of the snow. At this point Stian starts to have a melt down. He cries inconsolably for pretty much the entire time we are sitting on the tarmac. Who can blame him? I was a wreck too watching the clock tick by and knowing our window for catching the boat is getting smaller and smaller. So that was stressful. We finally get cleared for take off and pretty much as soon as the engines start up Stian conks out and sleeps for the entire flight.
We land in La Guardia, find the Royal Caribbean woman who is to help us with our transportation to ship, get our luggage and get in the cab. It's now 2:30. So we have to make it across Manhattan on a Friday afternoon and make it to the ship by 4:00. Hmmm, this isn't looking very good. Traffic was crazy, but we made a mad dash across the island.
After a very stressful cab ride where we are fighting with traffic, frantically calling Kris's family on the boat and telling them to tell the people on the boat to hold it for us - we make it to the pier. At 4:30. But the boat is still there! We can see it! We're so close! It's just right there. But they won't let us board. They tell us the ship has sailed. But it's right there. No, it's sailed. But it's still there, we can see that it's still tied up. Nonetheless, they won't let us board. (by the way, Stian was an angel in the cab. What a trooper. I did have to nurse him while we were driving, which made me very nervous, but handily it was during the part when were in Midtown and the pedestrians were walking faster than we were driving)
So there we are in the pouring rain, in our cab looking at the ship and being told we can't board. The port agent gets into the cab with us to talk. She will help us make arrangements for a hotel in New Jersey that night. We are on the cell phone with our travel agent who has booked us on a flight the next morning for San Juan and gotten us a hotel in San Juan. But the problem is that this is Friday, and the ship is at sea for two days and not due to arrive in San Juan until Monday. Luckily San Juan was our first port of call, as you can't board a ship at just any stop, but you can in San Juan.
So we have the cab take us to the Sheraton in Newark and we spend the night there. It was a nice hotel, we had room service pizza and beer and slept well. It was a stressful day and we were all exhausted.
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