But four days ago we looked at the weather at home for this week, and we immediately forecasted another cruise. Sure it's ten sea days but they are, for the most part, ten warm sea days. All of the ports except Aruba and La Paz, Mexico are new to us, and I've always said there is no place I don't want to visit at least once. We are always fascinated by the Panama Canal. This cruise is the first of five segments of the 2017 World Cruise and we were curious about what it would be like. And it's going to be cold at home and we have no food in the house and the car batteries are disconnected and we don't fly to Hawaii until the end of the month...
We booked the cruise on Virgin Gorda day and couldn't have pulled it all together without the help of friend Steve. We had emailed our CCL stock ownership documentation to him a couple of weeks ago just in case. And once we had a booking number, he faxed the information to Princess for us and followed up with a phone call and we had our CCL on board credit within a few hours; on a Friday before a three-day holiday weekend. Thank you Steve!!
So here we are, in a cabin just two doors down from our previous cabin, with cabin steward Maria who was our steward on the November 21 cruise. We were up very early this morning and watched from the Panorama Terrace as the Pacific Princess entered the Port Everglades channel. We ate breakfast and when we were done watched the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean from the Promenade Deck. Our new cabin was ready for us shortly after 8:45am (go Maria!) and by 9:20am we had moved in. We didn't pack and we didn't unpack; we simply moved things a few at a time in our Princess tote bags. Easy Peasy.
In the channel entrance to Port Everglades
The 17th Street drawbridge with Pier 66 on the right
We left the ship with my empty carry on suitcase and my backpack and a couple of Princess tote bags and walked through a few brief showers interrupted by periods of sun and high humidity over to Walgreens. Our shopping list was detailed and long; we had packed so efficiently that we started running out of things just this past week. Toothpaste, mouthwash, hair spray, some makeup and more spray sunscreen, gum...and then we needed some heavy liquids. We put our Walgreens purchases in the backpack and rolled the empty suitcase down to Publix where we added 12 half liter bottles of fuzzy water and Mentos and G bought two cans of his favorite instant flavored coffee. And then back to Walgreens where we added two 12-packs of Mountain Dew into the two tote bags and G carried them and we added a bottle of Barefoot Bubbly to the suitcase and we were loaded down like pack mules as we walked through another shower on our return to the ship. This is the not-fun part of turnaround day.
We dumped our purchases in our new cabin and I put our iDevices and charming cords and an extension cord into my backpack and we went to lunch in the Club Restaurant. When we were finished, we immediately walked into the terminal (Terminal 2) and it was nearly empty. We settled in next to a power port and I simultaneously downloaded two more seasons of TV shows from iTunes on my iPhone and updated 67 apps on my iPad and downloaded three more books and several more magazines and we have enough entertainment content to last 50 sea days, let alone 10. Bills were paid, appointments cancelled or rescheduled, neighbors notified, our flights home from Fort Lauderdale today cancelled, the heat at home turned up a little during this cold spell and we generally prepared to spend another 17 days away from high speed WiFi.
We reboarded the ship exactly at the on board time of 3pm, and attended the muster drill at 3:15pm. No one told us we had to attend again, but buried in our turnaround day letter for the first time was a statement that passengers needed to attend a muster drill at least once every 31 days (I think this was for the benefit of the World Cruisers). We hadn't attended since we reboarded the Pacific Princess on October 28 so we simply decided we needed to go.
This left just enough time for very short showers before we went up to the Panorama Terrace with the Barefoot Bubbly for sailaway. There were some late arriving passengers, and we were a bit delayed in sailing but by 4:45pm we were exiting Port Everglades into the Atlantic Ocean. Mom phoned, quite happy that she could see our little ship sail on the Port Everglades webcam for the first time this season. The day had turned sunny by then and it was a beautiful sailaway. Bye, Port Everglades, until at least next winter!
We always go to dinner about 15 minutes late on the first night of a cruise while people are lined up to be escorted to their new tables. Early dining was changed from 5:30pm to 5:15pm for this cruise, which, with all these sea days is fine with us. We were so fortunate (in fact, it sealed the deal on our decision to stay on) that Maitre d' Oscar allowed us to keep our table for two by a window for this cruise too. This time it really was the last flourless chocolate cake of the season, a very sad thought. We went to the Welcome Aboard show at 7:30pm and when we were introducing ourselves to the people sitting around us at Cruise Director Frank's urging, I turned to my left and met Deb who said she was from Wyoming and I said, "You're Lindsay's mom!", and she was. Dancer Lindsay told me just last night that her mom had surprised her on Christmas by telling her she had just booked this cruise. Lindsay wanted us to meet her mom, and when the curtain opened and Lindsay came out in stage, she looked surprised that we had already met.
Comedian Troy Thirdgill did a short routine and he was a scream. Actually, some audience members were a scream, so serious in their heckling of him that the rest of us were dissolved in laughter. Troy's long show is tomorrow night and this could be interesting...and harious. G observed that some of these World Cruisers are very serious people when something as innocuous as a joke about playing a tuba has a grandmother interrupting the comedian to point out her granddaughter makes good money as a professional tuba player. Honestly, I can't make this stuff up.
It is after 10pm on a day that started for us at 4:30am. I have a few things I've forgotten to say about the Christmas cruise. But they will have to wait until tomorrow (except for the fact that the Christmas decorations were taken down today); I am nearly asleep already.