Saturday - getting to the Gem

Saturday, we had a scheduled check-in time at our ship, the Norwegian Gem, for noon-12:30pm, so we had arranged for an Uber pickup from our hotel at 10:30am.

Sunrise out our hotel window

I was checking the marine traffic website on my phone and saw that there were two cruise ships heading up the Hudson (the large blue arrow-like icons)...

... the more southern one was the Norwegian Gem.

At about the same time, another Norwegian Gem cruiser posted a picture from a webcam at the southern end of Manhattan, showing the Gem passing Lady Liberty. She would be arriving at the port a little before 8am, all of the current passengers would need to get off, and then our cruise passengers would start check-ins at 10am!

I had checked our Uber reservation on Friday, and a driver had signed up for it, so I thought all was well. As we got outside the hotel, I checked to get information about what kind of vehicle the driver would be in... but at that point, the app indicated that there was no assigned driver, that the app was searching for a driver, and that no driver was found! Oh no! But a minute or two later, a driver was assigned and on his way. There were several hotels in the area, and, as I indicated in yesterday's post, our hotel only recently became a Hampton Inn, so it took a little while for the driver to find us, but we eventually got connected.

Information on the Uber app as we were on our way to the Manhattan Cruise Terminal.

The Intrepid is docked just a couple piers down from the Manhattan Cruise Terminal -- something we'd like to visit in the future!

After arriving safely at the pier and collecting our luggage from the Uber, a quick picture of the front of the Norwegian Gem.

Manhattan Cruise Terminal

We had been told that we would not be allowed to check in until our checkin time (between noon and 12:30pm), but Carl said, "Let's just keep on going until someone tells us "No!"...

... so we headed to the check-in area -- it was not very busy...

We got checked in -- while we were there, there were announcements for various "boarding groups" to get on, but we were not given a boarding group -- it seems that they had just started letting guests on the ship before we arrived (people with earlier check-in times had to wait in the boarding area until their group was called) -- all of those folks had been allowed on by the time our check-in was completed...

... so we got right on board!

Wow! That was easy!

We heard an announcement on the ship soon after we boarded that the cabin stewards were hard at work preparing our staterooms, and asking us to be patient for a while longer.

We had heard from other cruisers (YouTube videos) that the buffet can be quite crowded for lunch on the first day, so it was recommended to try other venues. We headed up one deck from the Atrium...

... looking down on the Atrium from one deck above...

... where we got a nice lunch (Reuben for Carl, chicken salad for me) at O'Sheehans Grill.

So... that catches you up with us to a little after noon on Saturday! More later!!!