Second Turn Around Day

I am up on Lido deck along side one of the pools. It is quiet and the sun is shining brightly. There are people with suitcases sitting at all of the tables. Some are eating and some are just sitting and chatting. The atmosphere is very different from what it will be in about 5 hours. Most of these people are getting ready to disembark when it is time for their color tag to leave. They are not laughing and having drinks and exploring. Leaving a ship is never as happy as joining a ship. Ken and I will get to view this scene one more time before it is time for us to be one of the people who are disembarking.

When we are in Fort Lauderdale we usually are berthed at pier 2 but today we are at pier 21. I can see 5 large cruise ships when I go to the bow so it is probably a mad house out there. I am amazed at how close these behemoths are to each other. I would have trouble parking a car that close to another car. But they can dock these things like so many toys.

At the last turn around day there were around 600 people who stayed on. It will be interesting to see how many stay on this time.

This cruise is only 6 days so I won’t have as many internet minutes so I will have to be a lot better organized. There will be three ports so I will have a lot more to report on and less time to do it in.

The announcement came that they were ahead of schedule and the in transit passengers could go to the Princess Theatre 15 minutes early. So we returned to our room and got our passports and headed down to deck seven. I inquired and the guide told me that there are 550 passengers staying on from the last cruise.

It was not long before we were being marched back out of the theatre. It was so simple. All we had to do was walk past one of the customs people with our passports opened to our picture and have our cruise cards under the picture. It took seconds and we did not even have to leave the ship. Fantastic organization!

We put our passports in the safe and went to the buffet. We were both feeling hungry. It was only 11:15 and they do not open until 11:30 so we took that time to go topside to check out the golf. It is just a putting green and not a mini golf course which is the norm on other ships. This is at the very top of the ship and it is windy up there.

 It may not be good for golf but it certainly affords wonderful views of the port and the other ships in the port.

Next we proceeded to the buffet where we feasted on deep fried scallop. YUMMY!

We came back to our cabin and I signed into the internet. On this cruise we will have 150 minutes each and not the 250 minutes we had last time. I checked our mail and wrote a note to Kerri and Ken called Jennifer. We had another Bon Voyage gift from Kim. This time it is a bottle of wine. She never fails to reward us for our patronage. She is a sweetie.

I called Room service and requested coffee cards instead of the mini bar. In these previous 16 days we have consumed one and one half of those individual sized bottles of brandy. So we have 14 full bottles right now and we don’t expect to need the other eight bottles we would receive today. If we collect all of it our suitcases will definitely be overweight. Coffee cards are very light and we do drink speciality coffee more often than we drink alcohol.

We relaxed in our room and met our new steward (Rakesh from India)and before we knew it the time for muster drill had arrived. Thankfully we do not have to attend.

The Captain announced that we will be in areas where there is Zeika Virus and precautions were listed. I had not given that a thought before his announcement. We may have to reconsider what we wear during excursions… although I don’t really think either of us is in danger of getting pregnant.

When coming down the hall earlier I saw that someone had left a nice long noodle in their refuse pile. I went back and got it. I will use it during the rest of our trip and it can join the garbage then. We have 2 beach breaks during this coming week so that noodle will be put to good use.

Sail away was really beautiful. The sun was shining and the building of Fort Lauderdale and Miami shone in the bright sun. There was a strong breeze but I only knew that from watching people on the upper deck over the bridge. Our balcony was sheltered and warm and the view was amazing.

We dressed for dinner and went downstairs. To our surprise the doors were open and people were going in even though it was not yet 5:30. Darwin and Pat and Rui were glad to see us and made us feel quite welcomed. Our new table mates had not yet arrived. We waited for 15 minutes and still they did not appear. So we went ahead and ordered our dinner. I guess word must have spread that our table would not be much fun without Fred and Mary and Randy and Janeen because we never did get new table mates. Perhaps they are football fans and they are watching the game in Club Fusion.

 We busied ourselves People Watching and remembering the fun times from the previous 16 days. We discussed the merits of licorice allsorts and other exciting topics. Rui had time for a nice visit and Pat told us about buying his mother a Kitchen Aid mixer when he was off the ship today.

Dinner was very good, Ken had the prime rib and for dessert I had the flowerless chocolate cake and as a special tribute to Fred Ken had one scoop of Honeydew Sorbet.

The show in the Princess theatre was at seven so we were too late to attend. We are back in the cabin and it is rocking pretty good and we can hear the sheet metal on our balcony banging in the wind. The captain warned of rough seas and I guess he was right on.

We will go to bed with memories of the “old” gang dancing in our heads.