Missing the Cruise

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

You know those stories you hear from people and you ask yourself, “How does that even happen? How dumb can you be?” Well, after yesterday, I will no longer be asking myself that. It happens . . . Sean and I are supposed to be on a cruise ship right now approaching Haiti, and instead we are currently at Newark Airport waiting for our flight to the Dominican Republic - yes, in order to catch up to our cruise ship. The good news - we are currently laughing about it and believe it or not, there were very few tears because seriously, how dumb can we be?

Yesterday was Friday, Nov. 21. Sean spent the day working at home, and I spent the day running errands and cleaning the apartment for our visitors. Sean’s brother is staying at our place the first half of the week followed by our friends, Joel & Nina (who we met on our cruise to Bermuda three years ago). Our ship was leaving at 4 PM, and I ignorantly assumed that was the time that we needed to be there. Sean says he knew that was when the ship was leaving, but neither of us read enough of the paperwork to read that we “must be” on the ship 60 minutes prior to departure - ship regulations. When did we realize this? Oh, in the cab that we caught at 2:45 PM. The day had gotten away from us - Sean receiving last minute phone calls from Axis, and I was trying to make our apartment full of boxes appear somewhat normal for our guests. It didn’t help us any that when we finally left the apartment we were denied by several cabs who refused to leave the city (the ship terminal is about eight miles outside the Holland Tunnel in Bayonne, NJ). The cabby we did finally flag down was a rock star - running red lights for his panicked crazed passengers, who were letting out grunts of frustrations, pounding our fists into our legs, whispering a few profanities, and giving each other dumbfounded looks of “Seriously, how dumb are we?”

Maureen the travel agent, Sean’s sister, had booked our trip for us. I would recommend her to anyone, especially after this. My sister-in-law is so incredibly calm. I called her in a panic from the cab, and she didn’t even flinch. She called Royal Caribbean for us and later helped us find a flight and hotel in the Dominican. No wonder she is so good at her job.

I also spoke with a woman from Royal Caribbean (RC) who told us the doors were closing at 3:15 and there was nothing that she could do. Rules are rules.

$50 and 75 minutes later (yes, that’s how bad traffic was), we arrived at the ship terminal to see that our ship really was about to sail away. There was one other couple there begging to board the ship. I took the information from the RC reps, as Sean held our cab, which he sadly knew would be taking us right back to NYC. We contemplated going straight to the airport to catch the first flight out, but instead decided to go home and try to pull the best deal we could to catch up to our cruise ship. With disappointment and sadness in our eyes, we realized that our vacation should have begun that morning. We reprimanded ourselves for letting work get in the way - something that both are struggling to get a hold of now that we’re back in NYC. This was truly a wake-up call.

After arriving home, with the help of Maureen, we found the best deal we could - a flight to Punta Cana, DR and 3 days in an all-inclusive resort. I ran and got us student discounted tickets (yes, I still get away with using my college ID) to Arthur Miller’s All My Sons on Broadway. I had been insisting on seeing this show before it closed - starring John Lithgow, Katie Holmes, and Dianne Weist. I do not recommend this show to anyone. Katie Holmes, who plays Anne, is beyond bad - first grade acting at it’s best. Her voice sounds raspy and gurgled (although I shouldn’t talk.), and we didn’t believe one thing she did - so fake. I felt bad for John Lithgow and some of the other decent actors - how they played off of Mrs. Cruise takes some serious skill. A couple of the other actors were way over the top - the guy that played Katie Holmes’ brother George randomly came out with a British accent. Who directed this show? How these people got cast is beyond me - that, or we just went on a really bad night. So, after some dinner at our favorite Galaxy Diner we called our disastrous day to an end.

The best part of the day was the fact that we got to be the first ones to sleep on our brand new couch which had been delivered that morning. C’est la vie!

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