Thursday, January 19th, 2023 Queen Victoria, Manhattan cruise terminal, New York City, USA
Updated: Jun 19, 2023
We were up very early to see the ship coming into New York harbor, passing under the Verrazano Bridge at 5:30AM and then down past the Statue of Liberty and into the Hudson River. We’ve sailed into New York a few times, but it has always been on the Queen Mary 2 and she is too big to dock at the Manhattan terminal and has to go over to Brooklyn. Docking on the Manhattan side is so much more convenient as it’s an “easy” walk to the main attractions.
Sandra did a Covid test, and we were very disappointed to see an extremely faint line appear on the test kit after about 10 minutes, it was actually hard to see the line – but the rules are clear, any line is considered a positive result. A few hours later the nurse arrived and took swabs from both of us, and as expected Sandra was positive, and I was negative. When the nurse called to give us this news, I’m afraid I lost my temper a bit; I asked why they were not following the CDC guidelines which allow for a release after 5 days, but apparently Cunard follows some other “maritime rules”. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. The weather today is cold and it’s raining quite heavily, so it’s not such a bad day to stay on the ship – we also have another 4 nights in New York at the very end of our adventure, so we are not too concerned about not being able to see everything. We are however disappointed to miss our much-anticipated dinner at the Oyster Bar tonight. In the US, when a cruise ship docks from a foreign destination, all passengers and crew are required to be processed through immigration – even if they plan to stay on the ship. Passengers are required to get off the ship and be processed in the terminal, and with Sandra still in isolation this would not be possible. Both the medical center and the purser’s office had advised us both to stay in our cabin and the immigration official would come to us. In the late morning the immigration office arrived, accompanied by the purser, and proceeded to give me a hard time for not going down into the terminal to be processed as I was not technically in isolation. An argument ensued. Eventually we were both processed with no issues – don’t get me started about petty-bureaucrats! In the afternoon, I ventured out in the pouring rain to procure some essentials, things like gin and bourbon! The Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood is just a couple of blocks from the cruise terminal, and I tracked down a couple of liquor stores that I thought might stock Sandra’s favorite gin, Edinburgh Gin Distillery Rhubarb and Ginger. After asking in several liquor stores for the kind of tonic that Sandra likes, one of the clerks finally told me that in New York State it is illegal for liquor stores to sell any non-alcoholic beverages. I tried to find the tonic in a few convenience stores and deli’s but was not successful – I guess we’ll just have to buy it on the ship. Incidentally, the name Hell’s Kitchen probably derives from the time when the area was predominantly a working-class Irish American neighborhood. No one can pinpoint the exact derivation of the name but in 1881 a New York Times reporter went into the area with a police escort to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to particularly infamous tenement as “Hell’s Kitchen” and said, “the entire section was probably the lowest and filthiest in the city.” In more recent the times the area has become quite gentrified and, being adjacent to the Theater District, is home to many actors.
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