And we’re off!

Almost. Bags are packed, diet compliant lunches and dinner packed, all we have left to do is await Peter, our airport driver, and turn on the alarms....and wait two hours. We finished up a little early, LOL. That, and we usually take a morning flight, but the best option for both price and connection this time leaves in the early afternoon. We don’t arrive in FLL until late tonight (temp. 75 and probably a similar humidity factor) after passing through Kansas City (temp. 28 with snow showers, 1-2” expected). Rather a wide range of weather today.

Because we have this extra time to kill, I have already checked our inbound flight information...our plane is on its way from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas. Then it goes from Las Vegas to Albuquerque where we join it, on to Kansas City, then Fort Lauderdale where we depart and then it goes on to Baltimore, arriving at some oh-dark-thirty time after midnight. And there were two legs before all the above, STL to HOU to OKC, making for quite a long day and definitely at least two crew changes. Yep, I am definitely finding myself with too much waiting time on my hands. Tom, not so much...

First let me say, Happy Easter to all of you, and second, I won’t be playing any April Fool’s jokes on any of you, so please don’t anyone play them on us. I’m already a Nervous Nelly what with Tom already yelling ‘Holy Shit, I forgot to pack my...cpap, passport, charger cords’. It would be funny if he was just trying to play a joke, but this is even funnier than that. He really did forget the Cpap, and the passport is still sitting on top of the dresser. Good thing he still has two hours left to remember anything else. Yes, we have a packing list, yes, all that stuff is on it. Tom just uses such lists as ‘yeah yeah, I’ll remember that’ reminders instead of actually checking things off as they go in the bag. 😳🙏🏻

And so it begins...

This is the latest we have started to haul out the ‘stuff’ in preparation for a trip. It is but one week before we head out on our next adventure, and while that might be too far in advance for the ultra-travelers among the rest of you, it is about half the time we usually like to have. Between laundry, checking which clothes still fit, sorting through the list of what we need, and don’t need....well, we just prefer having a few extra days to track down any missing or replacement travel needs.

Today I thought I would pack up the toiletry kit, along with the emergency pharmacy, the plane/hotel/ship anti-illness wipes, the money belt, electrical converters...and whatever else fits in that general category and is needed for this trip. Here is the photo of my supply boxes of things I might need:

Somehow, what I do need to take has to fit into that red toiletry kit on the bottom left. So I clearly have a bunch of sorting to do tomorrow, lol. Does it help that I did get my pill boxes filled for the full three week trip?

Finally....

Here are some of the promised photos from the trip...after I finally got the laundry, bills and taxes done! Check back again tomorrow as I will be updating the post with lots of pictures...

Tom with his old friend Peter B.

Lunch with the neighbors

I am pretty sure this is Huatulco, but then again it was a month ago...but I know it is not Puerto Vallarta, and the only other port in Mexico was Huatulco, lol.

This is Costa Rica..and Tom with a Capuchin monkey in the wild. These are semi-tame, because all the tour buses stop here and feed them.

Woke up to find ourseleves heading due east.....

San Juan Del Sur, Nicaraugua was a teeny little town, not much there, but it was a lovely day going in on the tender with Jackie and wandering the boardwalk.

If you look closely, that is Tom and Gene and Pam returning on the tender from their zipline adventure

The next series of pictures will be from the Panama Canal. Approaching from the south, crossing under the Bridge of the Americas, heading north through the canal, passing through the sets of locks, etc. etc.

The guys in the rowboat who do the lines to hook us up to the equipment to get dragged through the canal without bumping the sides!

Looking closely, you can see the metal catwalk below Tom, the same one the rowboat boys were photographed under. We are in the righthand side lock, the left hand side lock is the one you can see to the left of Tom. Very tight quarters here.

Even the office workers come out to wave at us.

Thar’s it for today’s pictures...still hving a weebit of trouble getting them to post in the correct size. So will start a new post for After the Canal pictures in a couple of days or so.

Our Penultimate Port

Today finds us in Puerto Plata, aka Amber Cove, in the Dominican Republic. This is a lovely purpose-built port, with a pool, swim up bar, lazy river, zip line, thousands of beach chairs and the requisite Diamonds International, tee shirt shops, and random souvenirs. We wandered around a bit, but mostly just enjoyed the view.

Tomorrow is a sea day, which for us means packing and final paperwork, and then we have a busy travel day on Sunday. I likely won’t be doing another post until we return, but next week I will be adding pictures of some of these lovely places we have seen. This has been a very relaxing trip, and we hve thoroughly enjoyed doing little but watch the world go by.

Maho Beach

Today we went plane spotting at Maho Beach. Thats the famous one where jets come in low over the beach just prior to landing. We did not see any 747 size jets (more on that below) but we did see jets land and take off. And no, not from directly behind, but from a safe side view.

(I have a picture, but dang it again, it won’t upload from the phone; the app works fine from the ipad, but that is not where the pictures reside. I’m gonna have to remember to reload this thing once I get home.)

We’re on the island of St. Maarten which was hard hit by the hurricanes last fall. There is recovery ongoing, but so much is still damaged. Many hotels are still closed (hence the lack of KLM jumbo jets), cars remain smashed in open lots, yachts and sailboats are still half sunk in the harbor, even a freighter remains about six inches from the main road to the airport. Boarded up windows are on every single block.

This island is very dependent on tourism, so they are happy to see the cruise ships returning.... and we are happy to be visiting again.

Observations

In no particular order of importance or value, here are the random observations we have noted over the past two days:
- 1950 passengers vs. 3200 passengers is a big difference, especially when you put them all in essentially the same size public space. This is noticably different in the theaters, elevators, buffet, etc. We really miss the open spaces on the Coral. Boo Hoo.
- The Concerts at Sea group are friendly, but all 700 are trying to eat lunch at the same time (in order to be in the theater for their afternoon show) or dinner for their evening events. We’re trying to figure out their schedule so we can do our things when they are not.
- Love Boat reruns are a hoot!
- Not sure what the weather is doing back home, but we’ve had two days of grey, and blowing winds and mist this morning. Crossing fingers that tonight’s clearing skies hold through tomorrow. It also means that all the people who would have been outside by the pools are stuck inside with the rest of the crowds. We did manage to sit outside and watch Movies Under the Stars tonight. Come On Sun!
- We know we sat next to some of the 60’s band members (the ones I forgot the other day were Gary Puckett, and the Boxtops) at the muster drill, and we probably keep seeing the others in the hallway. But we have no clue who they are and they sorta acted like they were hoping we didn’t ask them for an autograph in the elevator. And we didn’t, because we have no clue who they are. But we do ask how they are enjoying the cruise and they look kind of surprised at the question and we just wish them well when we step off the elevator. There is one fan who has their photos plastered on her door across the lobby...and we’re trying to figure out who we’re bumping into.
- The Fathom group is an interesting mix of people. Glad I went to check it out, but also glad I won’t be doing beach clean-up, concrete work, etc. I have enjoyed the meetings, although I did gracefully decline to participate in the life coach playbook activity. At my age I don’t need a playbook, and I definitely don’t need some kid telling me I do. But I do think they have a good purpose and can fill a niche market need. They are good people and I wish them continued success.
- Love, love, love our new waiter Yuriy, who just joined the ship on Saturday and will still be on when we return in April. Now just to find him and get assigned to his section on the crossing.
- Had the most wonderful snorkel and swim adventure today in Antigua. Night and day difference in how we felt after the one in Aruba. Great crew, more fish, better rum, and only 38 people on the catamaran, so we tipped double. It was well worth it.

And now, from your more rested blogger...

Yep, I took a few days off. The last couple of days were sea days on the Coral, involving more eating and sleeping and shopping and drinking, along with the required packing of bags (ugh). But fortunately for us, yesterday we trans-shipped to the Crown Princess, where we are now tucked into our new room.

We had to say farewell to Gene and Pam, who hands-down won the “who has the largest onboard balance” question at the dinner table, but I am happy to report they not only came away with a nice new camera, some great cruise memories, AND a Future Cruise Deposit, but Gene prevailed at the casino on the last night and managed to offset a good portion of their balance.

We understand they are headed into a couple of inches of snow in NM and will soon be wondering where the heat and humidity of Panama went.

The remaining three of us were met at the pier by Tom’s sister Gigi and her husband Bob who graciously drove a couple of hours over from Ft. Myers, picked us up at the Coral, dropped our bags at the Crown, got lost in the parking garage and went to lunch with us at our favorite greasy spoon seafood joint in Fort Lauderdale. After a brief drive up the coast, they returned us to the Crown, we said our farewells and boarded the ship. And proceeded to join a similar, but yet vastly different, cast of characters onboard.

First off, there is a Concerts at Sea group onboard. 700 aging children of the 60’s, Chubby Checker, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Paul Revere’s Raiders and a few other popular 60’s groups who’s names escape me at the moment. We saw some of them at the muster drill, but for the life of me I could not tell you who they are or which group they belong to. We’re not part of this group, but I am pretty sure we will be hearing at least a portion of the music by osmosis....the sound equipment they brought onboard takes up the entire conference room on deck 6.

Secondly, there is a group of about 200 from the new Fathom re-invented ‘cruise for a cause’ and their promotional videographers. We had heard about this one online and joined out of curiosity, which may have been a Huge error on my part, but will absolutely provide for some remarkable blogging. There will be much more to follow on this, but I just want you to know my cohort group meets with Katie today at 10 for an informative meeting on ‘What it means to be a Fathom cruiser’...and then Colin (who is all of maybe 29 years old) will be leading a guided discussion on “creating our personal playbook on finding a purpose filled life”. Yeah, there will be loads more to report about this one.

Lastly, our dining assignments were again goofed up. We again waited at the appointed dining room (for an hour!) to get them fixed. And again were told that the linked bookings did not come through from headquarters in Santa Clarita, CA. The ‘best’ they could do was put us at a table for 10 in the very early dining seating while simultaneously telling us that ‘everyone wants the big tables, you will have no trouble getting a small table in Anytime’. Fine we said, just put us at one of those small tables that nobody wants in Assigned dining because we know the big tables take much longer to serve. They could not, so we said we would try their big table for one night, but as we walked away, Jackie mentioned quietly to me how disappointing it was that the Crown could not do what the Coral did last cruise. 30 minutes later the new dining assignment card was delivered. Table for three, quiet corner in the back, next to the window. And a fabulous waiter. When we left after coffee and dessert, we walked past the large table previously assigned...they were about halfway into their entree course.

Stay tuned....