No, that's not a typo. I didn't mean to type Wow! In fact, if you could hear my voice you'd know from my tone that it was a long, slightly difficult, slightly frustrating day. I didn't' help my situation by continuously thinking "This would be so much easier if we were home and/or had a car and/or knew where we were going". But, we're not and we don't and we don't, and that's as much a reality of winter at sea as all the many, many good things we experience.
Backing up....actually, that's an amusing choice of words, because before we were even fully awake this morning, we knew by the noise the ship wasn't making, coming into its berth at Port Everglades, that something was different. In fact, the ship didn't back into Berth 2...it pulled in frontwards, with its bow toward the 17th Street drawbridge. The only time we've seen this before was last January when the Emerald Princess tested its emergency evacuation chutes. I don't think that was the cause today, but I can't say for certain what was.
We also didn't have too much time to ponder this; we grabbed a very quick bowl of cereal in the buffet and walked off the ship at 8:30am, with several missions in mind. It was 9:07am by the time we'd passed through immigration and walked up to 17th Street, and I know that because I looked at my watch to see how long we would have to wait for a Route 40 Broward County Transit bus to take us up to the Galleria Mall on Sunrise Blvd, and we waited less than four minutes. We paid $1.30 each and enjoyed the ride up along Fort Lauderdale Beach. It was less than five miles to the mall, definitely within walking distance, but we didn't have the luxury of time today.
While we were on the bus, I phoned the AT&T store that Google Maps said was located in the Galleria Mall only to find out that the store was, in fact, located about a 20 minute walk from the mall. We had to phone them once more while en route, as we were having trouble finding it, but when they told us to look for an IHOP, we were all set; THAT appeared on Google Maps.
This was the moment I'd waited nine long days for. As friend Suzan said in her email to me, my phone failure would have to happen just one day into the cruise. In reality, G and I did fine sharing one phone...but nine days of that were plenty, thank you. In the end, I got a 16Gb iPhone 4S, which can still use my same Lifeproof case (and, yes, I'll be taking it underwater again!). We considered getting G the iPhone 5, and I would get his old 4, but it just wasn't worth it to him. Neither did he want me to try to make do with only 8 Gb of memory. So this was the best solution for us both.
By the time we finished that transaction, it was nearly 11am, and I had an 11:30am appointment with an endodontist at the same dental office I'd been at 10 days ago. Apple Maps on my new phone indicated the office was over 5 miles away, obviously not a walkable distance given the time. So we phoned a cab company and sweated it for the 10 minutes it took for one to arrive. As G noted, we're not used to waiting for a cab...we have lines of them coming to us in every port. Just about the time I was giving up hope of being on time for my appointment, a cab appeared, and at 11:27am we walked into the dental office.
I needn't have worried...the endodontist was coming from his own office and was nearly 30 minutes late. And that was just fine with us; armed with power plugs and very high speed wifi in the office, we went to work, G paying bills and making phone calls and checking on things at home and me downloading things I'd backed up on iCloud.
Too soon, though, I was once again sitting in a dental chair where I was told that what had been done 10 days ago was just enough to get me out of pain; TODAY was going to be the real root canal. Oh joy.
Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!
They were a bit harder to come by today. I mean, it wasn't the first time I'd taken a taxi to a root canal, or had a root canal while looking at a palm tree. It was the first time I'd had a root canal by an endodontist from Venezuela, though. It was the first time two crew members from my same ship were having their dental appointments in the same dental office at the same time. But even I wasn't being fooled...I was, in essence, having a second root canal on the same damn tooth just 10 days apart, an experience for which I was paying nearly $1100 after insurance.
Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!
Travel insurance. Travel insurance. Travel insurance.
It was 2pm before I finally closed my mouth and was released from the confines of that dental chair. I was still numb and totally up for walking the 2.7 miles back to the ship. In fact, I had a return to make at CVS and a prescription to pick up at Publix on the way. And Publix is where we hit our only real snag of the day. The prescription that the ship's doctor had sent to the Fort Lauderdale port agent to be dropped off at Publix on Monday didn't get dropped off. Publix suggested I phone the doctor, but how does one phone a doctor on a cruise ship? I resigned myself to yet another visit to the Medical Center on board to get this straightened out, and another walk down to Publix next turnaround day.
We arrived at the ship just before the on board time of 3:30pm. We were pushing ourselves to walk fast...it would have been very embarrassing to have our names announced if we were late. Too many people on board know us; we would have never lived that down. We were tired, we were hungry, we were thirsty and I was a bit sore, but we had successfully navigated our way through a rushed and stressful turnaround day. The prescription issue was our only mix up, and we consoled ourselves with the fact that that was really outside our control.
We went out to the Terrace Deck to use our last few minutes of AT&T Internet (and I'm using the 4G network now, although I didn't see any real speed increase) and make phone calls, then showered and went up to Skywalkers for pre-dinner drinks. We met several cruise friends there...I love these January cruises!! Dinner was just chili and a baked potato for me. Oh, and flourless chocolate cake for dessert (you're never too sore for dessert!). We went to the 7:15pm Welcome Aboard show in the Princess Theater and then up to the MUTS pool for popcorn (I'll eat it tomorrow on Princess Cays) and fuzzy water.
I still haven't fully restored my new phone from iTunes, but I'm able to compose this post in my email account, and attach photos, plus listen to an audiobook on Princess Cays tomorrow and read an e-book tonight.
A new iPhone. A completed root canal. Fifty more days of cruising. All's right in my world once again.
Life is good.
:-)
Photos 1 to 3: the new Welcome Aboard segment with the Emerald Princess singers and dancers
Photo 4: Crujse director Lee Childers introduces his cruise staff
