Temperature: Warm
Cruise Life: We wake up around 5:30am to get an early start and to avoid the mad rush at the breakfast buffet. We also planned for a quick nap/rest before we leave our room.
We run up the stairs to Lido deck #15 for one last time. While we were walking around, the crew was starting their daily tasks of setting up and arranging the deck chairs for the new cruisers on the next leg of their cruise. No chair hogs this morning. It was really quiet up here. Kind of sad.
As we were eating our last breakfast on this beautiful ship, we were thankful for the many wonderful opportunities we've had during the last two weeks of our adventure. We met many wonderful fellow cruisers, members of the ship's crew (officers, reps, waiters, bartenders, photographers, cabin stewards, security personnel, tender operators), tour guides, and shop owners in port.
After breakfast, we head down to our cabin to freshen up, rest, and then do a final pack of our backpacks and tote bag. Hubby makes a final run through our cabin and makes sure nothing is left behind.
At 8am, we leave our cabin for the final time. I take a walk in the forward cabins, looking for Benjamin. I call out his name in the quiet hallway, kind of eerie as I hear no response. I found him a couple of cabin doors down, stripping a cabin clean. He meets me in the hallway and I give him "Pokey" a small beanie-boo turtle with huge green eyes. I also hand him a gift envelope to show our appreciation for the last two weeks. Benjamin is kind and very thankful for receiving Pokey. He tells me he would give it to his youngest daughter. He gives me a hug. He is so tickled to receive such a nice gift and the envelope seems less important. That touched my heart.
We make our way down to deck #5 and found a seat inside Vines. I drop Hubby off and make my way over to the International Cafe for our last coffee. I use up my coffee card with the last punch and the bartender says "it must be time to go". Yes, it is.
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| Coffee from the International Cafe bar area |
Back at Vines, I am burning through my Internet minutes and posting pictures here on my blog. Once I go through my minutes, I login to Hubby's account and continue using his minutes. It turns out that purchasing the additional 100 minutes ($25) on my account at the beginning of the cruise was a bargain compared to the $69 they normally charge. I knew I would use up the 250 minutes within 7 days.
As we get closer to 10am, we pack up at Vines and head over to the Michelangelo dining room where our group Brown 4 is meeting. At the entrance to the dining room, I see Angela (future cruise sales) is hosting our group. We laugh as our paths cross again on the ship. Twenty minutes later, we are called to disembark. We follow our group out on the starboard side gangway and get scanned for the last time. Our cruise has officially ended.
We work our way through the terminal and find our three pieces of luggage grouped together in the Brown 4 area. Easy peasy. We haul our luggage along with our passports and customs form to a much smaller line. At this point, I notice there are several longer lines for non-US cruisers. I heard that the folks in Customs/Immigration were finger printing all non-US cruisers. Wow! Now, that's going to take some time.
From the time we left the Michelangelo dining room, pick up our luggage, and get through Customs, took a total of 15 minutes. I find a Princess rep outside the terminal who then directs us the Princess Transfer area. I hand over my transfer tickets and Hubby and I sit on a bench to wait. We wait and wait. After an hour or so, we are getting antsy.
Almost two hours later, we are grouped together with fellow cruisers who are heading to the Ft Lauderdale airport. Our last stop will be the Embassy Suites Ft Lauderdale.
We arrive 40 minutes later and manage to get a room. At this point, we are extremely happy and thankful to drop our luggage and bags in our room. It's lunchtime and we are still on a cruise schedule.
We head over to Tokyo Sushi to dine on some sashimi. BTW, Hubby and I highly recommend this restaurant.
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| Simple salad with ginger dressing...Yum! |
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| Yellowfin Tuna! |
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| More tuna! |
Life is good!
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