In the air again!

Friday morning, Jimmy took us to the airport bright and early (well... early, anyway, not sure how bright we were!) to catch a flight to Newark in preparation for boarding our cruise on Saturday.

The gate agent told us that the jet-bridge was not working, so we would need to walk downstairs and across the tarmac to the plane. Unfortunately, the ground level area was not well lit, but fortunately, I felt with my foot and found the edge of the curb and therefore did not trip!

On the plane -- we were in the very last row -- at least the restroom was close by!

The sun was just starting to come up as we were taxiing out.

Approaching Newark - beautiful colors in the sky.

The Newark jet-bridge worked! (That's our small commuter plane at the end of it.)

We found it interesting that the gate area in Newark looked like a breakroom with tables and chairs. There were a couple of rows of chairs in another area, but most seating appeared to be at tables.

After two calls to the hotel in Elizabeth to ask about the shuttle, we finally figured out the correct location where we could catch the hotel shuttle (one person told us it would be a grey van, and another told us a purple van -- we finally got into a maroon van that had the right name and address on it!)...

and arrived at the Hampton Inn...

I don't know if you can tell it or not, but the name on the sign appears to be a temporary, printed-on canvas-like material and duct taped in place. I guess it has recently changed from some other branded hotel to a Hampton Inn. You may also be able to see that they are building or re-building the porte-cochère in front.

When we got to the hotel (at about 9am), the fellow at the front desk immediately said, "Check-in is at 3pm." I asked if we could leave our bags, and the lady at the front desk said something to him, and he agreed to let us check in, but made it clear that he was doing us a very large favor. Carl asked if we could go to the breakfast buffet ("to get some coffee," Carl asked), and at first the male desk clerk said we could only eat the buffet on Saturday morning, but then relented (again telling us he was doing us a huge favor) and told us we could go to the buffet and help ourselves before it closed at 9:30am.

We were glad to get breakfast and into our room early. We took naps to catch up on some of our missing overnight sleep.

There was a big outlet mall just down the street from the hotel, so we walked over there in the afternoon to get some walking in...

Two levels in a big oval type of structure so we could walk a lot and see a lot!

Looking down to the lower level.

From our hotel window, we have a hazy view of the buildings in lower Manhattan...

Zoomed in the buildings - One World Trade Center can be distinguished on the left side of the picture.

We are looking forward to getting to the ship on Saturday. We are happy that we don't have a flight, but just have an Uber ride on Saturday morning to get us to the cruise terminal.