Germany to New York Transatlantic Cruise – 2018

Today is the last day at sea and the last day of the cruise before we arrive tomorrow in New York, our final destination.

It was the best morning of the cruise in regard to the weather.  It was sunny, the seas were calm, and the slight wind was from the stern, making it very nice outside.  We got ready, and had yogurt parfaits in the room for breakfast, trying to eat a little less today because of the large meals we had yesterday.  We did more packing, and were about 85% done with that tedious effort.  We still are not far enough along to do a weight check, that will have to come later on this evening after we pack our clothes from today, and the rest of our toiletries, or at least the ones we will take home.

We headed out to walk around on the open decks, and stopped off at the Mermaid Bar to visit with Nemo.  We ended up watching the new Spiderman movie on the large outside movie  screen while we drank several bottles of water at the bar.  We were dehydrated from yesterday’s visit, we had not drunk enough water, and could feel the effects.  

The Seaview Bar was open since the weather was so nice outside, so we stopped by to visit with Miguel there.  That bar is wonderful during Caribbean Cruises, but virtually deserted during these colder weather cruises.

We eventually went to lunch in the buffet, and they had some very large prawns or tiger shrimp that were boiled and served in the shell, but it was split in half.  They also were serving raw oysters on the half shell, but we opted to pass on eating those since we have a travel day tomorrow.  Nothing worse that acquiring a stomach bug from a bad oyster right before a long travel day.

After lunch, we headed back to the cabin to sit on the balcony and enjoy the best weather day of the cruise.  We just happened to see a whale about 200 yards from the ship, up near the bow, and we passed right by it.  I was able to get some photos, but not with my larger zoom lens, it was too time consuming to change it, plus, I had already put all of my camera equipment away as part of the packing effort this morning.  This was the closest to a whale we have ever been while on a cruise.  We could even hear the blowing noise when it took breaths of air.  A little later, I saw another blow spout from a whale, but this one was much farther away.  Since we had seen two, I put on the larger zoom lens in case we had another encounter, and of course, we did not have any other whale sightings. Stephanie took a little nap while I worked on the blog for yesterday and today, and added photos for Halifax.

We then put together our list of the staff on the ship we wanted to tip, and the amounts.  We had to go to Guest Services to get some envelopes for the tips, and some change for larger denomination bills we had. We used the envelopes to keep the tips organized, but were not handing them out in envelopes, that is too impersonal.  We then headed out to distribute the tips and enjoy some of the sunshine on the pool deck, specifically the Seaview Bar.  We told Miguel goodbye and had a farewell drink there, and gave him a small tip.  Unfortunately, we had not spent much time there with him, but enjoyed the time we were there and our appreciation for the service he gave us.

We then headed to the other end of the pool deck to tell Nemo goodbye and had another drink there, but did not stay long enough to finish the drink there because that bar was not as protected from the wind and it was starting to get chilly.  We tried to give Nemo a small tip, but he refused it, saying he just enjoyed seeing us, and that was enough.  

We needed to go to Vines, but we wanted to change first, and I needed to shower after having worn a hat all day.  We headed to Vines and ran into Bill and Terri, and talked with them for a while, and also talked to Fidel, the bartender there, about Joseph, and how he was doing back in the hospital in Halifax.  We wanted to give some tip money to Joseph, and Fidel said he was giving all of the tips they made at Vines on this cruise to Joseph.  We hoped he would keep some for himself, but we left that up to him.

We needed some dinner, it was already 7:30 PM, so we headed up one deck to Alfredo’s.  The food was good, but unfortunately, there was a band on deck 5 in the Atrium, and they were playing too loud, we could hardly talk, and our waiter could hardly hear our order, and actually did not hear me say I wanted the soup for the appetizer.  We ate a little more hurriedly than our previous meals there, the music was just too loud downstairs to enjoy the meal.

From there, we went to Crooners to thank Henry and Jason for their service.  Jason had to go eat dinner, so we had to stay there longer than we wanted while we waited for him to return.  We had set a 10:00 PM target for our return to the room to complete the last of the packing, mostly the clothes from today.  It was almost 11:00 PM after we said our final goodbyes and made it back to the room.    Luckily, we get our last hour of time change back tonight, so that helped offset the late arrival.

We finished packing and set the wakeup call for 6:15 AM, and headed to bed.  Both bags were close, but under the 50 pound limit, and we had put everything in them that we knew we would take home, so we were good.  We will do one more weight verification before we leave the cabin tomorrow just to make sure we don’t need to make any adjustments.  The ship was scheduled to arrive at the pier by 5:00 AM, and we had been allocated a 7:15 AM walk off time.  

During the early morning, I was awakened by a tug boat sound, and looked out the sliding glass door and saw we were passing by the Statue of Liberty.  I woke Stephanie up and we went out on the balcony to take a few photos.  It was about 4:30 AM, so we went back to sleep to get the last couple of hours in before the wake up call.