World cruise 2

January 3

Yesterday we were actually packed and ready to leave half an hour before our target time. Once in Richmond, we had a nice dinner with M's family including the very well-behaved granddaughter (age 2). They will be keeping M's car while we are gone.

Today's flights to Ft. Lauderdale were both on time and both had very young children. The first flight to Charlotte had a cute little girl of 1.5 years who was perfectly behaved. The second flight had several who were quiet and one little boy (right across the aisle from us) of about 2 years who had a screeching meltdown for a solid 40 minutes. I'm not sure that even a set of those fancy noise-canceling headphones would have been able to cope with that.

By the time they brought the drinks cart around, he had worn himself out. Thus I was able to once again enjoy the perennial miracle of having iced tomato juice 36,000 feet up in the air. For some reason, that never fails to evoke my sense of wonder at the technology (and physics) that makes it possible for me to do that.

After some less than satisfactory go-rounds with the hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, I finally got the room I wanted...11th floor with a balcony facing the port so I can sit and watch the big ships tomorrow. One of the big ones arrived this evening while we were at dinner. It was too dark for me to make out its name.

We had a fun, relaxed dinner with a friend here in Ft. Lauderdale at a place called Bimini Boateyard. We had a table outside overlooking the marina. She is a cruise travel agent, so we had lots to talk about, although the conversation ranged all over the map way beyond cruising, as usual.

January 4

This morning there were 5 big ships in port that I could see and possibly another docked directly in front of the one closest to us judging by the morning shadows. I couldn't tell exactly which ships they were -- except for the Regal Princess right in front of us with her wide stern pointed at us -- but there was at least one Carnival ship with its "whale tail" on top.

We had a lazy day watching the ships, boats and drawbridge over the Intercoastal Waterway, reading, managing to get hooked to the hotel's wifi (not as easy as one would think in a Hilton hotel), and wandering around this huge hotel complex. We got back to our balcony just in time to watch the ships parade out of the port. One got too far away for us to see what it was, but the others were 2 Holland America ships, the Eurodam and Niew Amsterdam, then the Regal Princess and the Carnival Freedom. Sure enough, the "wide-bodied" Regal Princess had been hiding something even bigger than herself...Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas.

"And so to bed" (to quote Samuel Pepys) for our last night on land for a good long time.