Our efforts to help ourselves were hampered all night by severely limited WiFi, and I'll admit that by 4am today it all looked (and felt) pretty bleak. We were so tired from the stresses of the day and from our long phone conversation with Princess that concluded with their offer to book us flights home at $3000pp but at our expense. It just didn't seem right...we had already paid for our transportation back to Florida, hadn't we? Via the Pacific Princess?
But first thing this morning we were contacted and then contacted again by the wonderful Pacific Princess officers...first Leonardo, the Hotel General Manager who advised us to go home and he would arrange for Princess to pay for it, then followed up four times by himself or his staff (Gidea, the Customer Relations Manager is a STAR!!) and we were just phoned with probable flights for tomorrow morning as we were out for a three-hour long walk on the Promenade des Anglais along the Nice waterfront on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. (We needed some exercise. Our only walking yesterday involved our hikes to use the port bathrooms in torrential rain when the ship's bathrooms stopped functioning.)
The righteous indignation I felt last night has given way to a Great Big Sad. In fact, when Mom called to give and get updates, her first words at our news were, "But you've worked so hard and looked forward to it for so long!!" and I actually teared up (how old am I?). But that is more a result of getting only 45 minutes sleep last night. (BTW, my brother was injured seriously enough to be admitted to the hospital but not seriously enough for it to be life threatening.) But people might think that because we cruise fairly frequently the cruises mean less to us. Au contraire! Our lives revolve around cruises almost 365 days a year. This feels like a huge loss.
When I get home I'll do a wrap up and discuss what might happen next (when we figure that out for ourselves). I told Gidea to advise Maitre d' Oscar that he owes us about 16 bottles of wine...plus our MTP awarded champagne. We intend to collect...someday.
I must add that I have no information at all about the cruises beginning twelve days from now other than they are still scheduled.
Life is crazy sometimes. And someday soon it will be good again. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow will be another very long day less than two weeks after the last very long day. But someday... I'm sure of it.
