Day 25 - 08/27/22 - Boston, Massachusetts Disembarkation (or lack thereof)

 Last night we finished our packing and discovered that one of Angela's suitcase wheels had been forcibly ripped off in the luggage transfer from the shore to the ship in Boston.  I wish she would have noticed it at the start of the trip.

 

This morning we rose at 6:30am as the ship was approaching the pier.  We dressed and ate breakfast in the Lido expecting to begin disembarkation at 7:30am. So we headed down to deck 2 to wait in the Ocean Bar.  7:30am came and went with nary a word.  Finally BettyAnn came on the PA and said we weren't cleared yet. She repeated this message several times over the next half hour as more passengers crowded the area.  I overheard much grumbling.  At 8:20am I observed 2 Border Agents board the ship using the deck 2 gangway.

 

Finally just after 8:30 the announcement was given that 'self assist' passengers could now disembark on deck 2 or deck 1 center.  We walked to the end of the deck t2 line that stretched from midship to the World Stage.  When we reached that point, Angela suggested we drop down to deck 1 which we did and exited quickly through the terminal.  We were then directed to the other side of the adjoining terminal for Uber pickups.  I dragged her bag part way there but it was rapidly coming apart, so I loaded it on mine and went to terminal 25 where I requested an Uber pickup.  The first driver cancelled our pickup probably because we couldn't and wouldn't walk a mile to the pickup point. Juan, our second driver, picked us up and whisked us to the airport which was only a few minutes away.

 

For the past month I had read warnings that traffic to/from Logan International would be snarled.  It turned out that for this weekend the tunnels to the airport were wide open!

 

At the airport, we tagged and dropped off our luggage and sat drinking our sodas and chatted with a couple from St.Louis who had been on the Zaandam.  I showed them pictures of their ship in Halifax.  We then breezed through TSA security and went to our gate 35a.  We fly standby and there was a long list of people ahead of us.  We were eventually 11 & 12 on the list, but we made it along with two ladies from California and another couple. It turned out that an American Airlines flight had a mechanical issue and some passengers were transferred to our flight.

 

We're flying on a 737-9Max with ETOPS capability.  At this writing we're 2 hours from home. That's going to close out today's posting.

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