Sunday 21st of July & Monday 22nd of July - New York (USA)

Not from the cabin - we had a view of New Jersey, not particularly interesting

We docked at Pier 88, right on West 48th Street in New York.  We only had the option to arrive at 2:30am or miss out on the dock - so they made the decision to come in at night.

We didn't start our customs clearance until around 9:30am - and it took HOURS.

Our tour today was cut quite short due to having to wait 2.5 hours for customs to clear us to leave the ship - standing in a line for and hour and a half wasn't the greatest start to the day.

So we headed off down to Battery Park, where we boarded a boat to head over to Liberty Island and have a close look at the Statue of Liberty.  The temperature in New York was hovering around 37C and about 80% humidity - a rude shock after Newfoundland.

Lots of security to get onto the boat and across to the island - after taking lots of photos we then headed to Ellis island - where they processed immigrants for decades - it was interesting to see how those immigrants lived while they were sorted.

MIB Headquaters - actually part of one of the tunnel's infrastructure

Heading back we got caught in some traffic - but that was expected in New York.  The guide pointed out a number of landmarks - including where various movies were filmed.

This place has really had a LOT of construction in the last decade (last time Dave and I were here was about 10 years ago) - and it's amazing how quickly some of these massive buildings have been built.

Our second day was a bit more comfortable temperature-wise - and our tours today were both on the land and sea - a nice narrated journey up and down the Hudson River and then a drive through the city.

On the way out of New York in the evening we were racing a big thunderstorm - lots of lightning and winds - actually we found out later there was a bit of flooding and power outages caused by it too.

The night out from New York was the roughest we've experienced so far - the ship actually tilted about 15 degrees during one particularly bad wind gust, woke me up - and the pools/fountains on the ship lost most of their water (all over the carpet in some cases) - aparantly the unexpected shifting was caused by winds gusting upwards of 50knots!