Departure and 1st Port of Call: Newport, Rhode Island

Our 10-day cruise from New York to Quebec started out with a 3am wakeup call departure day Monday morning.  We had packed everything and put the suitcases in the car the night before. Tanner is spending the two weeks with his buddies at his rescue mom's.  He’ll have so many playmates he'll hardly miss us.  

We got to the airport in plenty of time to get a coffee and bagel at the United Club.  The flight left at 6:30am.  MA had spotted some kind of real deal for first class so we flew away in style! I could get used to that! A short two and a half hours later we arrived in New Jersey where we caught our prearranged transportation to the the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal and the Caribbean Princess ship was there waiting.

The New York bus ride  took us through the Holland Tunnel.  The driver said that people who break down or change lanes in the tunnel are fined a cool $1500.   From the tunnel we made our way through an area known as Soho and then Chinatown.  It wasn't a pretty drive by any stretch, lots of abandoned buildings and grafitti and choked with traffic. But we arrived safely, boarded the ship, had lunch and took a much needed nap!

The Caribbean Princess departed at 7pm and we sailed away past the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.  Today (Tuesday) was our first stop at Newport, Rhode Island.  We went ashore in the morning, walked around for a couple of hours and caught a tender boat back to the ship for lunch.  So far so good including being blessed with some great weather.  MA's off to a presentation in French about our cruise.  I'm in the cabin waiting on the hors d'ouvres!  Here are some photos taken in Newport.

I am using my D750 and an old Nikon Nikkor 35mm f/2.0 AIS lens.  It is a manually focused lens and manually set exposure with the camera.  I'm also using a Nikon 50mm f/2.8 AIS pancake lens.  Both are very sharp but require the photographer to manually focus and set the exposure.