Westysclan World Cruise 2023

We had a very early start this morning setting the alarm for 5am so that we didn’t miss the view of sailing past the Statue of Liberty scheduled for 5:15am. Having braved the rain to get a photo, it was off to the treadmill on the gym to watch the rest of the sights glide by until we docked.

We were actually surprised at how quickly we were off the ship and through immigration.  This left us heaps of time to visit a quieter early morning Times Square and Empire State Building.

Our first goal for the day was to be at the Eugene O’Neil theatre before the box office opened at 10am to get tickets for that evenings performance. Before setting off to sightsee, we had walked directly from our berth at Pier 88 through Hell’s Kitchen to the theatre so that we knew exactly where to be. When we got back at 9:45 we were second in line.

Tickets successfully purchased we had time for a drink at a diner before returning to the subway at 42nd Street to catch the 7 train to Queens.

Our destination was Citi Field to watch baseball – NY Mets v. Pittsburgh Pirates. We had prepurchased tickets online. This had been a bit of a drama because we needed to use the MLB app to access our tickets and for some reason (still unknown despite many emails and a phone call) it did not want to work properly on either of our phones. The solution was to turn up to the game early to get the problem sorted at the stadium.  The ticket problem was very quickly sorted! We had a bit of a hiccup at the entry gate. Because we had to take our passports through immigration and could not return to the ship until later in the day (US requires a zero passenger count before anyone can go back on the ship) we had brought our backpack to carry them in safely.   Unfortunately you can not take backpacks – even empty ones – into the stadium. We had to spend $12 USD  to check an empty bag into a truck service that they operate in the car park!

We really enjoyed the game. Mets won 8 – 3. At the start of the game I had wondered at the number of adults and children bringing baseball gloves with them. Once I saw how many hits and foul balls ended up in the stadium, I understood.

Game over, it was time to join the throng heading to the nearby subway station. One train was leaving as we got on the platform. We got on the next one after a 5 minute wait. We were all packed in like sardines. We had only gone 2 stops when at Corona Station we were all told to get off the train. A train had broken down at Corona Plaza further along the track (it was a W train which uses a different line).

We were now standing like sardines on the Corona train platform (which is like a bridge high above the ground). This station had been our ‘local’ station when we stayed here in Christmas 2013. When the trains started running again we had to let the first one go past before some of us could squeeze into the next one.

Our original plan was to return to the ship for a shower before walking back to the theatre. Now it was to get off at Times Square and go directly to the theatre.

Once again the subway thwarted us by skipping this stop and taking us directly to the end of the line.

Fortunately we were still able to walk back to the theatre in time for our 7pm show. It was also a relief to see that most of the audience, like us, had walked in directly from a day of sightseeing.