Day 1 Panama & Carribean Cruise

Day 1 Neil and Sandra’s Cruise to Panama and the Caribbean


Well we are off on an epic adventure; cruising on the Queen Mary 2 round trip from New York to Panama and the Caribbean – more on all the great destinations later. Today we were up at 6AM; finished getting the cats and the house ready and then it was around to Centro Espresso to see Susan for coffee and toast – it was excellent as usual! As a special treat, Susan had just finished cooking a beautiful turkey breast (for Tim’s lunch) and she gave us a nice juicy slice.

Off we went to pick up our son Scott in Sonoma who had kindly volunteered to bring our car back from the airport. We had pleasant and uneventful drive to SFO and check-in was smooth; Sandra had taken care of everything on line the day before!

Currently ~ 2 hours until takeoff and we are sitting in the food court of Terminal 3 deciding what to have for lunch before we board.

(Sandra) Neil the hunter is off foraging for food of course I have already been around all the food options and told him what direction he should take!

(Neil again) Tempura it is then!

We’ve just checked into our room in New York (Brooklyn). The United flight was full, as usual; we both had aisle seats which normally works our fine – however…

We’ve all experienced it; a full plane, you’ve got an aisle seat, the center seat next to you is empty and you’re watching the passengers scramble on – hoping that you get a small person. Things were looking up for me as a tour group of Japanese retired folks started to make their way down the plane. Wow I’m thinking, these folks are all small – great! My enthusiasm was short lived however, as I happened to get the only retired Sumo wrestler in the group for a seat mate.

Five hours later and my back is more than a bit twisted – hopefully I can sleep it off.

Another strange thing happened on the plane…

I’m reading a great thought-provoking book by Malcolm Gladwell called “Outliers” – it’s about how exceptional people rarely (if ever) make it without unusual opportunities. Anyway, I’m ploughing through the book and come across chapter 7: “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”. Most sane people would have probably stopped and done something else at this point, but I couldn’t resist. It got worse; the chapter chronicled in intimate detail the fate of Avianca 052 that crashed on approach to JFK in January 1990. Wait a minute, aren’t we approach to JFK – oh well.

The taxi ride to the hotel was fine, the cabbie was kind enough to hold open the trunk lid while I struggled with 3 massive suitcases – I thought that was really kind of him. In case you are wondering, the 4th bag had to go on the back seat between Sandra and I. Don’t you love what our modern world is coming to…when I told the taxis driver our destination I got a shrug, something muttered in a long forgotten exotic eastern European dialect and a strange facial expression. This was followed by a Garmin GPS being hurled into the backseat - all this for $47, what a deal.

The Le Jolie Hotel appears to be in a shady end of Brooklyn – though it’s dark (10PM) so it’s a bit hard to tell. The room is very nice though small, and we have a wonderful view – of the freeway. Sandra reminds me “it’s only for on night”.

We are starving and there is no way we are going walking around this neighborhood tonight. The hotel has no restaurant and so it’s a first for us – ordering in!

The pizzas have just arrived – we got 2 small “pies” as they call them here on the right coast – one would have been more than enough. Oh well we can always take the left overs onto the Queen Mary 2 tomorrow and ask the chef if he’d like to put them on the buffet.