I am going to keep this rather short tonight. We were up very early, had a busy day and now are faced with moving clocks ahead an hour overnight. Our current smooth seas are hopefully a good indication that we'll be able to tender into Princess Cays tomorrow, so I don't want to be up too late tonight. Besides, with only a couple of exceptions, it was a fairly standard Fort Lauderdale turnaround day, with the usual shopping to restock items, several phone calls and extensive use of our AT&T Internet to check on things at home, pay bills, text and generally Google ourselves silly.
We were in the Botticelli Dining Room for breakfast as soon as it opened at 6:30am. By 8:30am, we had received and organized the usual embarkation day paperwork (invitations, schedules and shore excursion packet) and minibar setup for this cruise and were walking off the ship. Even though we were at Pier 21 today, we were thrilled to see that there was a Global Entry line with no one in it, allowing us to bypass a long queue of disembarking passengers going through immigration. Honestly, now that Port Everglades has Global Entry lines for disembarking passengers, there is no better value than the $110 for 5 years that we paid for it.
We immediately caught a shuttle bus from Pier 21 to Pier 2, returning passengers back to their cars they left at Pier 2's parking garage a week ago. We had left the ship so early this morning that there were only two other couples on the bus, one of them doing the same thing we were: saving the time of walking and the cost of taking a taxi the 2+ miles to Pier 2.
Once at Pier 2, we walked over to the condo building called The Port, right across the street from Port Everglades, to tour the property. We are definitely not ready to buy, but might be in the market to rent there in the next few years. Following that, we toured the marina behind the condos (see previous post). I was really impressed by the whole development.
We briefly split up then to divide and conquer the list of things we had to complete. I mailed a couple of things to Mom at the auxiliary post office on the north side of 17th Street and shopped at Publix; G went to Walgreens and Chase Bank. We walked back to Pier 2 and were able to catch the shuttle back to Pier 21. Though it was nearly 11:30am by then, there were still 100 passengers from the Emerald Princess needing to get back to their cars at Pier 2.
Traffic around Pier 21, with the Westerdam and Independance OTS at nearby piers, was completely gridlocked. I'm sure there must have been some critical reason that the Coral Princess, just returning this morning from a dry dock in Freeport, Bahamas and with no disembarking passengers had to be at Pier 2. I just don't know what it was, but things were surely a mess as a result. After sitting in traffic right across from the Emerald Princess for 15 minutes, G and I asked our shuttle driver if she would be allowed to drop us off right there in the midst of the unmoving congestion. She said she couldn't, but if she opened the doors for some air and we just happened to hop out... So we did. At noon we were walking back on the oasis that was the Emerald Princess.
Following lunch in the DaVinci Dining Room, we grabbed charging cords and an extension cord allowing us to plug into a single outlet in Skywalkers and made phone calls and Interneted until muster drill. The seven short and one long blast on the ship's whistle kicking that off signal shower time for us, but the Emerald Princess sailed right at 4pm today and I didn't make it out onto the Terrace Deck until we'd passed through the channel into the open ocean. Still, we popped the cork on another bottle of Barefoot Bubbly (it landed in the Terrace Pool but we were able to fish it out after it drifted to the side) and toasted our 11th sailaway of the season.
I had the same butterflied shrimp and basa filet I've had before for embarkation day dinner, but changed from my usual flourless chocolate cake in favor of a Norman Love chocolate soufflé. It was...okay. The description was quite appealing but it wasn't too dissimilar from a regular chocolate soufflé. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;-)
We went to the Welcome Aboard show just to see another new comedian (for us). Jammin Jay Lammont, but were thrilled to see that Deputy Cruise Director Frenchie had come on board today. We sailed with Frenchie most of the winter three (I think) years ago and she is a treasure, truly one of the best. Jay Lammont does mostly musical impressions but with lots of percussive sounds and was very entertaining.
That was our day, and I'm finishing this up just before 9pm (10pm tomorrow's time). Go me! But I need to take just another few minutes to point out two occasions in less than a week where ship time and local time have not been the same (because this is a common question among cruisers): last week in Roatan, where the Emerald Princess stayed on EST though Roatan is on CST, and tomorrow; when the ship will be on AST though the Bahamas are on EST.
It happens. Occasionally. Just not often. Unless you've been on the Emerald Princess lately, in which case it has happened. Often. Not just occasionally.