Back home from Chicago

Monday, August 10, 2015

We were awakened by the docking maneuvers a little before 3am. We were docked at the Iroquois Landing of the Illinois International Port. It was not meant for cruise ships! It was better than tendering though. So while we were disappointed to miss arriving at Navy Pier, this had to be better. It was at 95th Street so far southeast as to almost not be in Chicago. O'Hare is on the northwest side of Chicago. It made for an over an hour commute. Since our documents had a scheduled 2 hour drive, we felt lucky that it was only 70 - 75 minutes! At $45 pp, they did not even stop at each needed terminal but dropped us in front of the airport Hilton. Honestly, we had expected for the $90 we paid that we'd at least be getting door to door service. We saw Terminal 3 signs as the American one when we drove past and just walked back after getting our bags from under the bus. I have no idea what the elderly, disabled and heavy packers did from there.

It was actually kind of a calm disembarkation morning because you didn't have to be out of your cabins until you were called to disembark. That made all the difference. We enjoyed a last breakfast with Edgar. I had the chef's special vanilla French Toast since I had missed my special Sunday breakfast. I cannot recommend the French toast! They weren't prepared to put maple syrup on it either, Edgar had to put on a full on scavenger hunt to find one dispenser. They act like maple syrup is gold on Saint Laurent, just so you know. The other final misstep was one of those information sharing problems. They had delivered at least 2 and maybe 3 invoice summaries to our cabin. Now, we had all been required to provide a credit card that they scanned with their computers when we checked in and before we got our keycards. We were told then that unless we made other arrangements this is how we were paying for our onboard bill. We agreed and used a Discover Card which we had used to pay for the cruise. None of the invoices they provided had any notes that we needed to come to Reception or speak to the Purser or to provide payment. They said if we wanted to leave in place the payment methods we had previously provided to do nothing. So we did. At 6:30am we could start picking up our passports. We heard some rumbles while in the dining room about people not being able to get their passports because they hadn't paid their bills. They were mystified but were planning to return after breakfast when the line had gone down. We went up right after breakfast and got in a short line. More than half the people in front of us were having to pay bills and everyone argued they had already provided a credit card. Of course they did and to the same women we were facing now! When we got up we drew a different woman than the one we drew 10 days ago. She said we had provided a Discover but they only accepted MasterCard, Visa and Amex. Clay wanted to argue with her that we knew Haimark takes Discover because we'd been using it to make payments. I stopped him and pointed out that would be pointless, even though they said they accepted Discover 10 days ago when they took it, today they say they don't so they won't. Give her a different card and let's move on. Just a head's up for those who may follow. She charged the Visa and returned our passports. I don't know why when Ken was making all his jokes about people having to stay and work off their bills, he didn't just tell us all to go check with Reception about the status of our invoices. That would have avoided some unnecessary departure morning stress for everyone. Of course, the people doing the invoicing should have printed the same message on all those papers they were delivering.

We got in and got our boarding passes from a kiosk with no wait. We both had TSA pre-check so we only had about 5 people in front of us. Unfortunately, something was wrong with 3 of those people and they weren't following instructions and brought the whole operation to a complete standstill. Then when I walked through the metal detector I either set it off or else it beeped as I was a random selection for a body scan and pat down. It was all still over relatively quickly.

We saw bagels and bought our lunch for the airplane. Then we found our gate K3 and settled in for a wait. There was no plane there when we got there. It arrived at around 11 and we started boarding around 11:25am. We took off 8 minutes early. The flight only lasted about an hour and it was smooth. We ate our bagels with our complimentary Cokes. There was a time change and in about an hour we were on the ground in Raleigh. We caught a shuttle bus to the parking lot shortly after arriving. We found the car easily and it started right up and we had an easy drive home. It was only about 80F and very low humidity. The grass doesn't even need cutting, though the cars need a wash. All in all, it's like we never left!

Still it is good to be home. It will be good to be here for a few weeks and I expect it will be harder to pack up and head back for Europe the next time.

It was a good cruise with Haimark's Saint Laurent and we can recommend it.