Friday, September 6, 2024
I’ll start out with a tip – if a port has a face-to-face inspection with the country’s Customs & Border Patrol personnel and you really want to see the port, book a Holland America excursion. People on those excursions (especially early excursions) will get the priority numbers and get to see the inspectors first.
The ship does not have any control on when the Customs people will show up. Today, the agents were supposed to be brought aboard by tender by 7:00. The ship was notified that the agents were ready to be picked up by about 7:15. By the time they got the agents over, set up in the Dining Room, and technology was functioning – it was closer to 8:00 before Group 1 was called. We were in Group 10 so we went on to breakfast in the Lido.
We had our group numbers, passports, and our room cards. When our group was called, we made our way to the Dining Room. The first HAL worker took your numbers to be sure you weren’t in a later group, once you got to the front of the line, another HAL person pointed to the Custom’s person you were to see, the Custom’s person looked at your passport, did something with his/her technology, and since we passed inspection, said “have a good day” and then the last HAL person put a sticker on our room key.
We were then free to take a tender to Bar Harbor. You could not get on a tender without that sticker on your room key. There were 36 groups called and then they had to call 3 people by name who didn’t show up in their assigned group. Wasn’t over until after twelve o’clock.
Even if you had no intention of going to Bar Harbor today, you had to meet with the Customs Agents.
We had a good time the last two times in Bar Harbor, but we didn’t have plans to go there today. After our inspection and we got back to the room, the room stewards had already put the luggage mats on the bed ready for us to start packing. 😁 We took the hint, and we got the suitcases out from under the bed and started getting things organized to pack up.
We had to decide what we needed to keep for the next day and what could go on in the suitcases to be put out in the hall for pickup tonight. Once those decisions were made, it was not that hard to get the stuff back in the cases.
Finished in time for some relaxation on the Sea View deck and we stayed there until the sailaway party was over. Then it was time for our last night on the ship. The comedian was doing a repeat of one his shows on the main stage, so our last night was much like the other nights. Dinner in the main dining room, Casino, and two sets of the Rolling Stone Lounge band.
Just like that it was time to put the suitcases out in the hall and call it a night.
Tomorrow: Boston, Massachusetts and Disembarkation
