ALL DONE AND DUSTED.... PITY!!

All done and dusted (written Tuesday December 21 @ 12:30)

As I write this, we are now on the Acela Express train zooming along to Washington for the rest of our holiday.

This morning we had set the alarm for 5am, but awoke just before that and saw us go under the bridge that marks us heading into New York. About 20 minutes later we passed the Statue of Liberty (which we could see from our balcony). It was very dark and very cold.

Then we got dressed, walked on the deck for the last time, had breakfast for the last time in the Queens Grill. We then gave everyone their envelopes with their extra gratuities in. And we then sat in the Queens Grill Lounge until 9am. We were supposed to disembark earlier, having "Penthouse Priority", but the regulations seem to be that all transit passengers had to report to immigration first and a whole pile of them could not be traced for ages.

Once we got the go to go, it was all very easy off. We had a very fast trip through immigration and customs. The car we had booked through Cunard was ready for us. We got dropped at Penn Station right near the ticket area and as we were early got on the 11am instead of the noon train