New England/Canada Cruise. Day 8. Don’t Want to go to Hallie’s House.

Hallie woke up this morning from the squeak of the bathroom door.  The first thing she said to Tzvi was, “Mommy make a pee pee.”  The second thing she said was, “Don’t want to go to Hallie’s house.” 

Today we woke up already docked in rainy New Jersey. Pop Pop had been up early so he actually saw us go under the Verrazano and dock.  We were not up that early. 

When we got our luggage tags we learned that our set departure time was 7:45am. That was funny. I'm sure there are people who listen to their selected time and think they actually need to be off the ship by that time, otherwise... something will happy. We are no longer those people. I think my mom knocked on our door around 7:45 to wake us up. The dining room officially closed for breakfast at 8:30, so we got ready pretty quickly.  

We made it to the dining room and were seated in our usual area. We had a nice leisurely breakfast. Muhammed brought Hallie blueberries for a last hurrah. Tzvi ran to get the last coffee from the specialty coffee card that we bought at the beginning of trip, and it was probably the best latte of the trip. We really took our time with breakfast. I think we sat there until after 9 and I think we were the second to last people to leave.  By the time we were ready to leave they announced that the gangways were so crowded that no one was allowed to get off the ship until further notice.  So really it didn't matter that we were late. 

Eventually we got off the ship and headed to the luggage area.  Tzvi quickly found a porter who got all of our luggage and then took us to the front of the customs line. Obviously he required a tip, but was totally worth it (although I wasn't the one paying it, so that's easy to say). At customs I realized we had fruit with us, so we asked the customs agent if we could throw away the apple and pear.  The agent took Tzvi into the back room where they checked the fruit and then told Tzvi he could keep the apple because he was officially declaring that he was importing an apple from Canada, but he couldn't keep the pear because you can't bring pears in from Canada.  It's all a little funny because all of the fruit on the ship gets picked up once a week when they dock in New Jersey. 

I also had blueberries, but I didn't declare those because God forbid they took those away.  We had a long car ride home and Hallie needed her blueberries.  We made it.  

My parents and Austin got in the car with Dominic and we went with Joe. Sad to leave the ship, but a fine ride home. 

Great vacation.