Well, we may be only a few miles from Port Everglades, where we disembarked the Emerald Princess this morning, but somehow I feel we're halfway home. Scratch that...I feel like we're in another world.
We were in the very last disembarkation group today, scheduled for 10:55am, so we had no need to rush. We had a leisurely breakfast in the Botticelli Dining Room, and apologies to traditional dining fans on the Emerald, but I do not like that dining room! It feels quite claustrophobic to me. However, we still enjoyed breakfast...with our last remaining mini-bottle of Korbel champagne. Walking out of Botticelli, saying a final goodbye to all the familiar faces, it finally hit me. We won't be there tomorrow. Sigh!
Afterwards, we vacated our cabin and said a final goodbye to our Steward Nazi. We endured. Maybe he feels the same way. And that's all I have to say about that. :-/
With no place else to go (we despise sitting in the Elite Disembarkation Lounge), we camped out with our carry ons in the back of the buffet. It was chilly this morning in Fort Lauderdale (60F degrees, which is essentially North Pole weather to us), and, dressed as we were, in shorts, t-shirts and sandals, it was too cold to sit out by the pool, our usual disembarkation day M.O. Why do we dislike the Elite disembarkation lounge so much? Well, I'll tell you: Princess has gone to a much quieter, more peaceful Silent Disembarkation, eliminating the need for announcements of all the luggage tags colors...except in the Elite lounge, where it's just as it used to be, with colors being announced every few minutes. We don't consider that to be much of a perk. With the latest disembarkation color group tags, we knew we'd just wait for the "last and final" announcement, when everyone except for in-transits needed to disembark.
While we were in the buffet, the Thai trio (Surasit, Suttipong and Nicky) came by to say one last goodbye. And that's when I finally got weepy. It's hard to say goodbye to people knowing full well we may never see them again. Knowing Sutti's email habits (uh...he doesn't have any, checking his just once every few months), I will rely on Surasit to stay in touch. Even when they're home in Thailand, they still talk with each other frequently. I told Surasit that he has the responsibility of being our communication connection to Sutti and Nicky. He said he's up for the challenge (and also claimed part of the accolades for Sutti's artwork; after all, HE drank a lot of the Orange Fantas that provided the cans for the metalwork). ;-)
We were actually walking off the ship by about 10:45am, and by 11:15am had endured the usual gauntlet of claiming our four monster bags, dragging them through immigration and out of Terminal 2 to the shuttle pick up/drop off area. (An aside: we had had a discussion last evening about whether or not we had to claim all the little bottles of alcohol that remained from our minibar setups, 22 of them in all, as we hadn't actually paid for them. Closer scrutiny of the customs form showed that the wording is Purchased or Acquired, so we decided that the answer was yes, and claimed 22 bottles of liquor... teeny, tiny bottles).
We were in the very last disembarkation group today, scheduled for 10:55am, so we had no need to rush. We had a leisurely breakfast in the Botticelli Dining Room, and apologies to traditional dining fans on the Emerald, but I do not like that dining room! It feels quite claustrophobic to me. However, we still enjoyed breakfast...with our last remaining mini-bottle of Korbel champagne. Walking out of Botticelli, saying a final goodbye to all the familiar faces, it finally hit me. We won't be there tomorrow. Sigh!
Afterwards, we vacated our cabin and said a final goodbye to our Steward Nazi. We endured. Maybe he feels the same way. And that's all I have to say about that. :-/
With no place else to go (we despise sitting in the Elite Disembarkation Lounge), we camped out with our carry ons in the back of the buffet. It was chilly this morning in Fort Lauderdale (60F degrees, which is essentially North Pole weather to us), and, dressed as we were, in shorts, t-shirts and sandals, it was too cold to sit out by the pool, our usual disembarkation day M.O. Why do we dislike the Elite disembarkation lounge so much? Well, I'll tell you: Princess has gone to a much quieter, more peaceful Silent Disembarkation, eliminating the need for announcements of all the luggage tags colors...except in the Elite lounge, where it's just as it used to be, with colors being announced every few minutes. We don't consider that to be much of a perk. With the latest disembarkation color group tags, we knew we'd just wait for the "last and final" announcement, when everyone except for in-transits needed to disembark.
While we were in the buffet, the Thai trio (Surasit, Suttipong and Nicky) came by to say one last goodbye. And that's when I finally got weepy. It's hard to say goodbye to people knowing full well we may never see them again. Knowing Sutti's email habits (uh...he doesn't have any, checking his just once every few months), I will rely on Surasit to stay in touch. Even when they're home in Thailand, they still talk with each other frequently. I told Surasit that he has the responsibility of being our communication connection to Sutti and Nicky. He said he's up for the challenge (and also claimed part of the accolades for Sutti's artwork; after all, HE drank a lot of the Orange Fantas that provided the cans for the metalwork). ;-)
We were actually walking off the ship by about 10:45am, and by 11:15am had endured the usual gauntlet of claiming our four monster bags, dragging them through immigration and out of Terminal 2 to the shuttle pick up/drop off area. (An aside: we had had a discussion last evening about whether or not we had to claim all the little bottles of alcohol that remained from our minibar setups, 22 of them in all, as we hadn't actually paid for them. Closer scrutiny of the customs form showed that the wording is Purchased or Acquired, so we decided that the answer was yes, and claimed 22 bottles of liquor... teeny, tiny bottles).
We didn't wait long at all, and, luckily, in the sun, the temperature felt juuuussssstttttt riiiiiiigggghhhhtttttt, before we saw a Comfort Inn bus hauling a luggage trailer pull up...across the parking lot. G jogged over there and came back motioning that we had to haul all our luggage over there to board the bus. Great. Still, by noon, we were walking into the Comfort Inn, where we were told that, no, our room wouldn't be ready until 3:00pm, but we were free to stow our bags and hang out by the pool.
And that's when it became like being on the Emerald Princess West, as, sitting in the sun around the pool were so many of the same people we'd just been cruising with. They, too, were waiting until 3:00pm to check into their rooms for the night.
G immediately pulled two cans of beer out of his carry on, and a half-consumed bag of Cheese Chex Mix from last November, and we leaned back, toasting our rapid return to...normalcy. Warm beer and stale Chex Mix...now we're back on familiar ground!
This is our first time spending a post-cruise night in Fort Lauderdale before returning home. We didn't really have a choice; we had "old" frequent flier flights on Southwest that were expiring on March 18th, and we hated to see them go to waste. We couldn't use them today, but could catch an early flight tomorrow that will have us home shortly after noon. Somehow, the thought of returning home in daylight, to a cold house with no hot water cheered us more than returning home after dark tonight. We've even unplugged all the lamps, TV sets and DVR boxes at home, and disconnected car batteries. It will be much easier to accomplish the things that need to be done immediately without holding a flashlight between our teeth. Like last year. Just as we did with taking the late flight to Fort Lauderdale in November, arriving at our hotel about midnight, we may decide that we really prefer to spend the extra night. We'll see...
We've never stayed at this Comfort Inn before, but we've frequently stayed in the immediate area. The Home Depot and KMart are right around the corner, the Hyatt Place South is across the street, and my favorite fast food in the world is too- Chipotle (there's also a Taco Bell right next door, but I don't do Taco Bell). In a matter of hours we've gone from fast food meaning a meal in the buffet to fast food meaning the kind of dining we can afford. Sigh.
We got lucky; G saw people taking their luggage out of the storage area and going to rooms shortly after 1:00pm. He checked at the front desk and was also able to check in early. The Comfort Inn has a weird layout; one has to cross the pool area to get to any of the rooms, the elevator is on the far end of the building and the rooms all have exterior doors. But, to its credit, it has perhaps the friendliest cleaning crew I've ever seen. We were welcomed with a smile by every one of them. In fact, considering what we're coming from (our SN), these people are gold. They also left a complimentary bottle of water and snacks. Fresh snacks, not four month old snacks. Pay dirt!
It was just a bit too chilly to want to spend anymore time by the pool. G used the afternoon to redistribute weight among our four suitcases (and we've decided that if we both put our carry ons in the overhead bins on the same side of the plane tomorrow, it will simply fly in circles). It's not pretty- none of it is. We're right around 45 pounds in every suitcase. I'd like to think I'm blameless, but I do have 240 pillow chocolates for the kids, several pieces of sea glass, a few ziploc bags of sand and some shells. But I'm not the biggest offender. Trust me on this.
We didn't want to get on our hands and knees to put our passports and wallets in the tiny safe that sits on the floor, so G stayed behind and I walked across the street to pick up Chipotle for dinner before it got dark. G had our two remaining beers cooling in a sink-full of ice when I returned. It wasn't Sutti and Somphong, and we ate off a towel on the bed with a view of the parking lot instead of off a tablecloth with a view of ocean, but we survived. Watching Seinfeld re-runs on the 32" TV in our room helped. So did a text that I received during dinner: the twins want me to pick them up from school tomorrow. They're sooooooo excited. Me too!!!!!
We've set our alarm for 5:30am (ouch). We'll wheel all this luggage back through the pool area and grab some breakfast before catching the 7:00am shuttle to the Fort Lauderdale airport.
In less than 24 hours we'll be home.
:-)
Photo 1: hang on just one more day!
Photo 2: our legacy on the Emerald Princess: we left this souvenir coconut from Princess Cays on a table on the Terrace Deck for newly embarking passengers
Photo 3: the Emerald Princess (on the left) and the Coral Princess were docked at Terminals 2 and 4, perpendicular to each other
Photo 4: our first non-cruise meal: a chicken burrito bowl from Chipotle
