I am glad that we had the chance to go to dinner that evening. Our dining team asked us what our plans were and we advised them that we had an excursion at 18:45. Service that evening was even sleeker than it normally was. The menu that evening was fantastic. Graham had smoked duck salad followed by Chicken Cordon Bleu, pea pilaf, carrots, and broccoli with lingonberry jelly. I had my usual Coke. I had chosen the chilled honeydew melon soup followed by braced short rib and beef shoulder, grits, parsnips, green beans and crispy onions. This was my first time of trying grits and I was not at all sure what I would make of this, but I actually really liked it and it worked fantastically well with all the different flavours. For dessert, we both had Cherries Jubilee, which was one of the better desserts. All in all, dinner took just short of an hour. Yet it still did not feel rushed.
Once we had finished our dinner, we headed down to Studio B, which was our meeting point for the excursion. They checked our excursion tickets and then we were directed to an area to sit down. Everybody must have checked in early as they called our excursion ahead of our meeting time and we headed to the gangway. The Manhattan cruise port is not a pretty port, but it is an interesting port and the location cannot be beaten. We headed down to the bus. There was a couple of slight hold ups. First we lost a group of people between leaving Studio B and getting to the bus. One member of the group had mobility issues and they were taken a different way than the one we had come. Somewhere during the process, they had decided that they no longer wanted to come. Once that was established, there was another bus blocking us in. Once that had moved, we were on our way.
Once we were on our way, our guide told us a lot about the area we were in. He was very knowledgeable and throughout the tour, he told us about the history of the areas we were passing and also a lot about the architecture we were seeing. I was really enjoying this. He also told us about New York in general. Soon we were crossing the river. Unfortunately buses are not allowed to go over the Brooklyn Bridge, but we crossed on the next bridge along. Shortly after we crossed the river, we made our first stop. We were given some free time to head down to the waterfront to take photos of Manhattan all lit up. I really enjoyed just standing there and taking it all in.
After a while it was time to head back to the bus. We headed back over to the Manhattan side and our guide told us more about the areas we passed, but also told us about the Christmas touches that we may encounter and made some recommendations about things we may want to see. Then we arrived at the Empire State Building. He asked us to come back down an hour after we had arrived at the top. As we left the bus, he handed us the tickets. We headed inside. The footprint of the building does not look all that big, but we seemed to be walking for miles. We just walked through the lines that had been set up, but if it were busy, this would not be fun. We had a slight wait at security, but this was only 10 minutes or so and when we got to the lift, we had to wait for the next one. I was absolutely fascinated by what I saw when we got off the lift. The Empire State Building is really a striking space and the views were out of this world. I was struggling to get a specific photo I wanted and Graham came over to suggest we go upstairs. I knew that there are various levels and that our ticket did not allow us to go to the top observation level. I had thought that were we were as high as we could go. Fortunately Graham had been there before on his solo trip in 2015 and knew that we could go one level higher.
We got in line for the lift and headed up. I was like a child at Christmas. I could not get enough of the view. We slowly made our way around the observation area and I took a ton of photos on the way round. Once we were back where we started, we headed down. I had a quick look at the gift shop, but there was nothing I wanted to buy. We also had a look at the photo that was taken before we went up, but I passed. For the price they were charging, it needed to be something really special and it was not. We quickly went into Walgreens inside the Empire State Building as we wanted to get some cotton buds and once we purchased those, we headed back to the bus.
We had a little bit of a wait until everybody was back. I tried to go online on my phone, but considering that we were in the middle of New York, the reception was dire. I did manage to get online briefly and managed to check in on Facebook. Once everybody was back, we headed towards our final destination, Times Square. As we were driving towards it, our guide told us a bit about Broadway and the shows there. As we got closer to Times Square, he gave us two options. We could either get off Times Square and the bus would pick us up at midnight or we could stay on the bus and head straight back to the ship. Neither option appealed to us. I wanted to get off at Times Square as I had something that I wanted to take care of, but it was obvious to me very quickly that I would not want 90 minutes there. Graham suggested that we could walk back to the ship. I liked the sound of this and as we got off the bus, we let the guide know. He gave us some directions and we headed off.
