We had a leisurely (if unexciting) breakfast at the hotel and took a short walk before taking a Lyft to the American Star for our Hudson cruise. We made the mistake of having lunch on the ship – not because it wasn’t good but because our first tour was “Crime and Cannoli”, a guided walk through Little Italy.

Our guide, Rob, told us about the early days of the Mafia Black Hand in New York, both on the criminal side and the police force. Our first stop was at 240 Centre Street, which was the NYPD Headquarters for many years but is now a condo.

Diane and I had walked through Little Italy in April, but this tour mostly took us places we hadn’t seen then. I was intrigued by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, but we had to walk by on our way to Petrocino Park.

Petrosino Park is named after Joseph Petrosino who was one of the most effective members of the police force’s attack on the mob; he was so effective, the mob killed him.

We had pizza and cheesecake in the park, fighting off the local wildlife.

The “Descendant of Thieves” shop is the current tenant of the building which was John Gotti’s HQ; it was called the “Ravenite Social Club” then.

We stopped at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was the mob’s church (they got married and baptized there). Joseph Petrosino’s memorial service was also held there.

We finished our tour with cannoli from Caffé Palermo; I have no photo, but that’s ok – you can’t taste a photo.

The ship set sail at 5:30 and we started with a cruise down the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty. Along the way, we saw the Jersey City skyline and the Colgate Clock.

The Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal is now a museum; there’s also a monument called “The Empty Sky” commemorating the New Jersey residents killed on 9/11.

And then we sailed by the Statue of Liberty. I took far too many photos.

And then it was time for dinner, with the skyline just outside our window.

We’re supposed to dock in Milton, NY at 1am. What’s in Milton, you ask? Not much, but we’ll take a bus over to West Point for a tour there tomorrow morning.

We’ve listened to the Bowery Boys podcast for several years; they mostly talk about New York City history and architecture. Every year, they do a special Halloween show with New York ghost stories – this year, the show was Ghost Stories of the Hudson River, which seemed like a great thing to listen to before we take our Hudson River cruise.

The show dropped yesterday, and we were able to listen to a bit more than half of it on our drive to SFO; we finished it after getting to our hotel (the Fairfield Inn at JFK – perfectly acceptable for an evening).

We probably won’t be able to visit any of the sites they mentioned, but we will sail past Bannerman Castle tomorrow night.

Our Hudson River cruise is imminent, so we packed today. We’ll be on a small ship with no laundry facilities and it’s not clear whether there will be any opportunity to have laundry done on shore, so we’re packing defensively and will have to check a bag.

I didn’t think I’d need much zoom for photos on this trip, so I wanted to leave my big camera behind. But when I picked up the Lumix ZS100, it felt very awkward – so I’m carrying the big camera after all.

Not a very exciting day, I admit, but a little calm was welcome!

A few weeks ago, I spotted a little piece of black plastic in the kitchen; it looked as though it had broken off of something, but I had no idea what. I threw it away.

Today, we were making one of our favorite recipes, Broccoli-Walnut Pesto Pasta for lunch. I’d put the pasta into the water and was ready to make the pesto in our mini food processor, but when I pushed the button, nothing happened. I tried reseating the bowl – no dice. I swore – it didn’t help. The pasta was almost ready , so I gave up and pulled out the full-sized food processor, which was more than up to the task of making pesto.

After lunch, I tried again to make the mini-processor work. In the past, when I turned the work bowl, there was a distinct “click” as it snapped into place and triggered the safety switch – not today. I looked at the bowl, and it seemed OK; then I looked at the base of the motorized section and discovered that the latch (at 10 o’clock in the photo) was missing.

I kept fiddling with it and managed to break another latch (near the bottom of the photo), just by touching it. The piece that fell off looked just like the mysterious black plastic piece I’d wondered about.

Mystery solved.

I’m probably going to buy another mini food processor, because it’s a lot easier to clean than the Cuisinart. But I’ll be more careful with it.

Celebrity Cruises has a loyalty program which offers rewards as you earn more and more points. We’ve earned enough that each of us gets one free bag of laundry on every cruise, but that’s not enough to get through a long trip. The next status level doubles the free laundry allotment, but it’s still pretty far away.

They’ve started offering ways to earn rewards points without taking a cruise, which seems potentially useful. So far, the only offers I’ve seen have required us to watch a “webinar” about a destination (“webinar” is code for “infomercial”), which hasn’t been too onerous. Today’s offer was a webinar about their Alaska cruises and cruise tours; we sat down to watch and enjoy the very nice photography (and I’m sure they were saying things, too).

There was a problem, though – every minute or two, the video player controls popped up and blocked some of the picture. I couldn’t figure out the reason, nor could I stop it. And I didn’t want to stop the video because then I probably wouldn’t get the credit for watching it.

After the video ended, I had a thought – would a different browser work better? I usually use Safari, since it’s the default on the Mac, but I fired up Chrome and went back to the video. And it worked – the controls didn’t pop up, so I could enjoy the photography. Well, I could have if I’d been watching, but we had dinner to make!

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day. I did some more culling, labeling, and editing of photos from Africa – tonight’s photo is of a hadeda, taken at the Fairlawns Hotel and Spa in Johannesburg.