2025 15N Trans-Atlantic Cruise Day 16: Boston and Flying Home

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Day 21: Sea Day (Saturday, 13 September 2025)

Cruise Compass

Today’s Weather

Location at Start of Day

 

DISEMBARKATION

Pre-research on CruiseCritic (and, ultimately summarized nicely at this website) yielded lots of helpful hints about getting from the Boston cruise terminal to Logan Airport which, on the map, is just a short trip across the Boston Main Channel from the port. Of course, it is never quite THAT simple! The basic ways to get from A to B, in descending order of convenience, are:

· Taxi: A taxi can be obtained directly outside the cruise port and will get you to the airport in about 15-30 minutes. Cost was quoted at $49 including tip, although many thought the poster might have gotten ripped off. Based on other web sites, it seems like a taxi ride should only be about $25. Taxis will drop you directly outside your desired airport terminal.

· Ride-share: Uber (et al) will instead pick up at Dunkin’ Donuts (One Harbor St, South Boston, MA 02127), a 0.3mi/6min walk across the parking lot just outside the terminal. Folks talk about it taking only about 5 minutes to get picked up for the ride to the airport. Costs will be about $15-20 and you will be dropped off at the airport’s central parking area, meaning you’ll have to walk some to get to your terminal. (At least one CC user says that rideshare CAN pickup directly outside the cruise terminal, and the use of Dunkin’ Donuts is nothing more than a convention many use to speed up pickup and avoid the congestion in front of the terminal. Further, they say rideshare will drop you off directly outside your terminal – which makes sense. The central garage is the PICKUP location, not the drop-off.)

· Public transit: The Silver Line bus takes about 45-60 minutes but only costs $2.40pp. From the cruise terminal walk 0.2mi/4min to the SL2 stop at 29 Drydock Ave @ Design Center Plaza and grab the SL2 heading to Design Center/South Station train (inbound towards South Station) and then exit at the 3rd stop at Silver Line Way. Cross the road and catch the SL1 (outbound, in the opposite direction to that which you arrived on the SL2) bus to the airport. The bus stops at all airport terminals.

· Water Taxi: For about $20 you will be whisked across Boston Harbor in about 10 minutes. However, you first have to call the water taxi dispatch line to tell them you’re about to arrive at the water taxi dock, then you walk to the west end of the cruise terminal, then south to the waterfront, and then west again to the end of the pier (about 0.2mi).


Then, after the water taxi drops you off you have to look for airport shuttle bus #66 to get to the terminals. So while this might a scenic/novel method, it is definitely not the fastest.

However, if we found ourselves with a late flight out of Boston then it made sense for us to take the Water Taxi from the port to the Rowes Wharf stop. They have a special ticket (about $50 per person) that allows you to take a water taxi from the cruise ship to Rowes Wharf, store your luggage, and then return later and take another water taxi from Rowes Wharf to Logan airport. While onboard the water taxi from the cruise port you select the general time you want to take the Rowes to airport trip, which is flexible. The trip to the airport leaves at x:00 or x:30, but this is fudged +/- 15 minutes for the 15 minute ride. Therefore, it is suggested you allow 45 minutes for the whole trip. They will store luggage at Rowes Wharf, which would allow us to walk to a bus stop and grab a bus over to Boston Common and take a walking tour of the Freedom Trail to kill a few hours. It is possible to simply walk to the Common, but this is just under a mile of distance, so using the bus (in this case, the Red Line) cuts out about 6 minutes of time and 1500’ of distance. (The walk would take us down Batterymarch Street to Tremont Street.)


The end of the walking tour is at Faneuil Hall, which is only 0.3 mile from Rowes Wharf, so is a simple 8 minute walk back.


At the airport side an on-airport shuttle (Massport Courtesy Shuttle Route #66) that runs at roughly 15 minute intervals from the water taxi dock would take us to the terminal of our choice. (Delta flies out of Terminal A.)



FLYING HOME

I’d (of course) looked at several options for flying home:

· Flying from Boston Logan to either SJC or SFO. There were several options for nonstops to SFO and one-stops to SJC. Most departing around 4:30P +/- 90 minutes. The SFO flights were about 7 hours long, and the SJC flights were around 9 hours +/- 30 minutes. SFO flights were about $450pp, SJC flights about $750pp. So, on the whole, it made more sense to fly to SFO and plan to Lyft home. We’d get there faster, cheaper, and arrive at the house earlier.

· Flying from Providence’s airport. We could take public transit from Logan to Rhode Island and arrive in about 2:30 for roughly 50-80pp (perhaps less). From there we could take an 8 hour one-stop connecting via Detroit and arrive at SJC around 10P at a cost cheaper than BOS-SFO. Didn’t seem worth it.

· Flying from Hartford’s airport. We could take public transit from Logan to Connecticut and arrive in about 4 hours. Pricing was the same as flying from Providence and used the same connection in Detroit. Again, not worth the 4 hour bus ride.

Pulling the trigger on buying tickets for a flight from Boston was a tough choice. When I’d originally looked up pricing in early late 2024, trying to get a sense of reasonable budget numbers, it seemed like $450 per person (for Premium Economy) was the going rate. As we got closer (April 2025), prices were tracking at $500pp. Given that the Virgin Atlantic pricing to London never budged, it seemed like higher fares were here to stay. Finally, on April 3 – the same day all the new trade tariffs went into effect making future predictions nigh impossible – the prices dropped to $480pp. Rather than gamble, I locked in those rates for a late afternoon flight from Boston.

At the time I booked the flights, the departure time was listed as 420P EDT with 828P PDT arrival. However, when I started tracking the flight on FlightRadar on August 19 I noted that all the flights seemed to be scheduled for 455P departure, and checking in with the Delta app showed that our flight was also listed for the later departure. Interestingly, the arrival time barely differed: it was arriving at 831P PDT. Not sure why there hadn’t been any email from Delta advising us to the modified departure time, but ultimately this didn’t make a huge difference. If we chose to go downtown from the cruise port it would give us another 30 minute cushion before needing to get to the airport – and if we just went to the airport it would potentially give us another 30 minutes to enjoy the Delta Lounge (assuming we could purchase access).

As to what ACTUALLY happened on this day…

We were up at 630A (ugh!) for a quick WJ breakfast, then veg’ed in our room until 830A, when we went down to the Theater, expecting to get our call to Customs around 10A – but everyone was OK’ed to process out at 845A, so were were off the ship by 9A. We walked over to the Water Taxi to await our 10A pickup, meeting another couple doing the same thing as us so we chatted. It was a perfect day for a Water Taxi ride. We were dropped off at Rowe’s Wharf where they stored our luggage. We walked over to the New England Aquarium around 1030A and stayed there, including lunch (which was surprisingly good), until about 1P.









We then slow-walked along the Boardwalk back to the Water Taxi stop to make our 2P trip to the airport, spending the bulk of that time just sitting and people watching. E was starting to feel REALLY tired. We both slept poorly and her cold is slamming her hard.



Between the Water Taxi transit time and a bus from the taxi stop to the terminal, we were at BOS by 230P. We checked our bags and bought some snacks for the plane. By the time we sat down at gate E17 E was really struggling – her cough was really bad, and a cough drop made her feel like shit. For a while I was worried we might have to reschedule our flight and hole up overnight in a hotel, but E was determined to be home. Her fatigue remained but the malaise eased up by the time we boarded for our 455P departure and she took several micro naps on the flight home. We were making good time and were expecting to arrive about 30 minutes early at SFO, but in the final stages ATC routed us really strangely. Instead of descending from 11K as we passed directly over SFO and continuing with the left turn over Stanford we were instead kept at 11K feet and were soon making multiple RIGHT turns as we were routed out over the ocean. I’m guessing they were simply making room for other planes to slip in ahead of us. In any event, we ended up landing at the original time of 830P rather than 8P as hoped.

I stashed E in a chair while I waited for the luggage at the baggage carousel, first finding her a can of ginger ale to take the edge off her combined hunger and nausea. We got a Lyft that took us to S&W’s by 935P and walked into our house around 1010P. From there were collapsed into bed.