October 29 The journey home

    Anthem of the Seas was docked in Cape Liberty by 6 a.m. Anthem’s voyage from Southampton to Cape Liberty was 4,254 nautical miles (7,878 km). Several hundred nautical miles were added to the original plan because of diverting our course because of bad weather.

    We were awake before 5 a.m., breakfast venues opened early. On Deck 4 the Promenade Café opened at 6 a.m. while La Patisserie café and restaurants American Icon and Silk at 6:30. Up on Deck 14 the large buffet, Windjammer, opened at 5:30 but the small Solarium café opened at 6:30. People started leaving the ship at 6:45 a.m.

   The sky was clear as the sun rose at 7:23 a.m., there was a light wind and temperature was 6° C, the same temperature as at home. We went to the Solarium for breakfast and watched the Enchanted Princess cruise ship, which was coming from Halifax, go to her dock on the Manhattan side of the Hudson River. 

   Our Tag number was 25 for disembarking Anthem of the Seas at the Royal Caribbean Cape Liberty, New Jersey cruise terminal about 8:15 a.m. Clearing Border Security and Customs was not needed here since it was done in Boston. We boarded the bus shuttle to Newark Airport, to get to Terminal A for our Air Canada flight. By the time we were settled into our seats on the bus, we had walked 2,360 steps. Air Canada check-in was smooth and we joined the single line for security which moved slowly but only took 20 minutes. We had to remove phones, I-pads, Kindles, laptops, tablet and even Claire’s GPS tracker and place them in a bin, plus removing our shoes, jackets and all the usual things. Then everyone went through a body scanner. Our gate was in a smaller mini terminal of just nine gates in a semi-circle. There were lots of seats and for food there was an Earl of Sandwich restaurant and a coffee and snack store plus the usual souvenir store. We did not have a lot of different views on our walk in circles waiting the three plus hours for our flight. Lunch was a coffee and half a wrap each. The flight was just over an hour to Toronto. It was a 564 km flight.

  We had a four and half hour wait for the flight home in the Air Canada terminal which had several changes from when we were last there in 2018. The best thing was that the connecting flights, whether domestic or International, no longer needed to collect their luggage before leaving Customs and then go through the big security line. Luggage was checked in at Newark through to the final destination. Once through the Customs electronic area in Toronto, which had a Nexus/Global Entry line, we just needed to turn in the declaration receipt and back into the main airport into the departures gates area without having to go through security. It took less than 30 minutes. We found the Tim Hortons, which had moved from its former location by the stairs exiting the security check. The step count as 6,027.  We had lots of space to walk in the domestic gates area. There were a few pubs, a Starbucks, two Tim Hortons and an A & W plus snack stores, clothing stores and souvenir stores. We finally decided on a muffin or bagel and coffee for dinner. There was a very short delay for a flight attendant to arrive before the plane home could be loaded. We were pretty much on time arriving home, collected our luggage and messaged Scott, who was waiting nearby, that we were ready for pickup.  


Total steps 13,805


early morning Manhattan skyline




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