Friday, August 23, 2024
Another restless night. Just couldn’t get my temperature right. Too hot and then too cold. Air conditioning? Hormones? Whatever – I just know I spent most of the night either pulling the covers up or kicking them off. I just got up at 5:30. That’s when the fun started.
To try and not wake up Chuck, I closed the door to the bathroom to take my shower. Not sure what happened but the lights suddenly went out just as I was shampooing. Pitch dark. I was very glad I didn’t trip or slip as I got to the light switch. The switch was outside of the bathroom. It went off again when I was toweling off. We finally decided the lights were on some sort of motion sensor from the outside of the room. Not a great design and so noted on the review.
After a decent free breakfast buffet, we caught the hotel shuttle at 9:00 back to the airport. With a combination of the outside luggage drop-off, TSA precheck, CLEAR, and our gate being at the Delta T concourse, we were at our gate at 9:40 even with Chuck’s backpack having to go down the “naughty” lane to be reviewed by the Agent. May be a record.
We took off promptly at 11:50. It was a little bit of a rough ride. I watched The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. It was much better than I expected.
We arrived at Boston at 2:15. Beautiful, sunny day. Once we retrieved our luggage, we found the Holland America (HAL) representative, and she called the company that was going to take us to the hotel.
The last time we were in Boston, I made a reservation at the Downtown Hilton because it was close to the start of the Freedom Trail, and I had a lot of points. We took Uber to the hotel. Since we were not spending any extra days in Boston this time, and I found that the HAL-sponsored hotel was very close in price to all the others I checked, I booked with them. The cost also included transportation to the hotel from the airport and then to the ship the next day.
We walked to the car pick-up area and the town car driver was waiting. The Friday afternoon traffic was very slow. The driver said the road/tunnel construction and the Red Sox having a home game that day were combining to make a bad traffic day. I don’t think I have ever come to Boston when there wasn’t road construction.
We were staying at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in the Back Bay area of Boston. The outside plaza is still being renovated but the hotel itself wasn’t terribly affected. Our room was ready, and it was nice. But hotel entrance was beautiful.
We walked around a few blocks just to stretch our legs and do a little sight-seeing and people-watching. There was a farmer’s market on the plaza of the public library.
We ate an early dinner at Solas Irish Pub. There were some enthusiastic Red Sox fans at the bar. I never did find out if the team won that night. I had a bowl of clam chowder, homemade potato chips, and an Irish cider. Chuck had a cuban sandwich, french fries, and beer. With tip, almost $100. Crazy.
We had to have the bags ready to be picked up by HAL by 8:00 the next morning so we had an early evening. I got the bags tagged with the cruise luggage tags. Getting closer to sail-away.
