Wednesday, September 30th, 2009, New York, New York

Our arrival into New York in the wee hours of the morning was quite dramatic. It was still dark as we cruised up the Hudson River past the Verrazano Narrows bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan. It was so dark, in fact, that the lights were still on in most of the skyscrapers, forming a mosaic of brightly lit windows and the looming, pitch dark structures of the skyscrapers themselves. Very impressive skyline!

Dawn broke as we edged further northward toward the cruise ship dock around 55th Street. The lights went out in the skyscrapers, but as if to make up for that lack the rising sun turned the sky a deep crimson red. The sharp, black spires of the skyscrapers stood out in stark relief against the blood-red sky in back, which was a quite different, but just as beautiful view of the city skyline.

We joined Lois and Phyllis for a final good-bye breakfast and afterwards said our farewells as they were taking a shuttle bus to La Guardia airport to fly back to the Midwest. We, on the other hand, had opted to take our luggage and walk southward to Penn Station where we had reserved a bus ride back to Washington.

Although it was a fair distance from the cruise ship terminal to Penn Station, we trucked right along pulling our wheelies and arrived around noon. Since our bus didn't leave until 2:00 p.m., we holed up in a Border's bookstore on Madison Square Garden. That way we could sign in and check our email using their free Internet Wifi connection, plus we could snack on bagels and have some coffee to keep awake.

The bus came exactly as scheduled, a bit of a relief since we were getting rather fatigued, and we curled up for the 5-hour drive home. The bus dropped us off in Arlington and we took the Metro out to Vienna, but by that time we were really getting tired and so we caved in and took a taxicab the last few miles to our house. Fortunately the house was intact and we just paid the cabbie, pulled our luggage inside, turned everything on, and tumbled into bed for the night.