I don't have much to report after an unremarkable turnaround day today in Fort Lauderdale. Maybe that's not quite right; we were the only ship in port today, and turnaround day when we're the only ship in port is a remarkable thing, like a whole different sport. It was funny...while we were walking down 17th Street, most of the other people also walking down 17th Street were crew members from the Emerald Princess, so there were a lot of familiar faces.
Also noteworthy: the Emerald Princess turned and docked at Pier 2 in Port Everglades without waking us up this morning. I can count on two fingers the number of times that's happened in the past, out of nearly 50 cruises. It was the door slamming around us about 7am that finally woke us up, and we immediately went down to breakfast in the Botticelli Dining Room. We both splurged today, and had blueberry pancakes after our orange segments. We usually stay away from pancakes (they're not the most nutritious breakfast) but knew we'd be having a high-protein lunch. And they were very splurge-worthy.
About 10am we walked off the ship, once again being escorted to the front of the immigration line with our Global Entry cards. But today it only saved us about 5 minutes; there was no line at all when we disembarked. We first walked down to Office Depot, where we faxed our ETrade statements to Princess in California to secure the CCL OBC for our last cruise. We split up then, and G went to Chase and I went to Walgreens and bought just some hand soap and another bottle of Barefoot Bubbly. We met up and were back on the ship right at noon.
The day was sunny (finally!) and dry but very cool. It was only 48F when the Emerald Princess had arrived early in the morning, and I think the high for the day was 70-ish. But it had been a perfect day for a walk. We went to the DaVinci Dining Room for lunch and discovered a very different menu for this 4-day cruise.
G was thrilled to see chateaubriand- the 'old' embarkation day lunch beef- back on the menu. I had the salmon and he ordered the beef...and then he ordered another serving of it. We split a 375ml bottle of Chardonnay and I left him still eating and drinking and walked back off the ship into the terminal to make some phone calls and use the free wifi to download some magazines and books on my iPad. Honestly, after 2pm or so, the terminal is a more quiet and peaceful place to sit than anywhere on the ship.
One of my calls was to Princess shareholder relations to intervene in an effort to get that OBC applied. We had already electronically submitted the info twice and then faxed it again today; time was running out. By 3:15pm I had finished everything I needed to do, and a few minutes after I heard the horn sound the muster drill emergency signal, I reboarded the ship. By then, everyone was at drill and it was fast and easy to get back to our cabin.
Sailaway was celebrated with Barefoot Bubbly on the Terrace Deck. Dinner was necessarily light; I had just a seafood entree....and flourless chocolate cake for dessert, of course. G skipped dessert altogether but later picked up some ice cream from Scoops. We were thrilled to see that the Welcome Aboard show on this short cruise wasn't a Welcome Aboard show at all, but instead production show I Got the Music. We hadn't seen it in a few cruises. In fact, last cruise, 5 nights long, we saw only two shows: Welcome Aboard with Dan Riley and Farewell show with...Dan Riley. The rest of the nights were taken up with MTP and Captains Circle parties. And watching the Denver Broncos win Super Bowl 50, of course. Have I mentioned that lately? ;-) (Today, I did really, really, REALLY enjoyed getting caught up with the media coverage that followed that game).
And that's all we did tonight. One of the Piazza entertainers whispered to me this evening that this short cruise over Presidents Day weekend is going to be very interesting. It will, but it's not anything we didn't see last year on the short Caribbean Princess cruises. I may need to hide in our closet every so often to decompress, but, if the weather stays nice and people can be on the open decks, we should all survive just fine.
Fingers crossed.