The sea days all seem to run together. We get up in the morning and have breakfast
at Sabatini’s and then go to the spa, attend a lecture or just read. It has been a very relaxing trip across the
Atlantic Ocean.
Yesterday we were in Ft. Lauderdale. Our plan was to get up have breakfast and
head into town to do a little shopping.
Well the best-laid plans can some times not work as well as you think
they will. We got up and went to
breakfast, which was different as they had shut down the kitchen in Sabatini’s
and had to bring our food from another kitchen some where on the ship. After breakfast we thought we would delay
getting off the ship until the tours had departed to forgo the long lines at immigration.
Wrong again. The good
ole US of A had decided everyone, including all the ship personal would have to
go through immigration. 3,000 passengers
and 1,200 crew members lined up to have their passports checked. It took us an hour and a half to go through
the line and get our passport stamped.
Once through this (CF), we took a taxi to a shopping area
that we were familiar with from previous trips to Ft. Lauderdale. WE stopped at a grocery store and picked up
some items to have in our cabin. Then we
walked down to a little Greek restaurant that we have eaten at before. We sat outside and had a nice lunch. They called a cab for us and we headed back
to the ship around 1:00 PM. We were
thinking that by now things would have calmed down and we would just walk right
on. There were just going to be 1,400 of
us on board going to Houston. We walked
into the waiting area to board the ship and found the room full of people
waiting to get back on the ship. Some
had been there all morning. We lucked
out, as we just kept walking toward the entrance and they started the boarding
as we got there. The fun however did not
stop there. I should mention here that the
Coast Guard was conducting a safety drill this morning. When we finally got on the ship, after
showing our boarding card 4 times, the Coast Guard decided to shut the ships
power down, this meant that the elevators were out of service. We proceeded to climb the six flights of
stairs up to our cabin.
Back in our cabin Judi got every thing put away and we
headed up to the top to watch the sail away scheduled for between 3:30 and
4:00. At 6:00, when we had still not
sailed we came back down to the cabin.
We sailed around 7:00 and we watched the enormous Royal Caribbean Oasis
of the Seas (Monstrosity of the Seas)
Follow us out. Very
pretty sight at night.
The crew was never able to get off the ship and many had
family and friends waiting to visit them.
The crew was gathered on deck 7 and the families were on the pier. They waved at each other and talked on the
cell phones, but that was as close as they got to each other. They passed the Coast Guard test with flying
colors and the Immigration service ensured that we were all safe.
It was not the smoothest day we have ever spent on Princess,
but once we were back on board the crew did everything they could to make it a
wonderful ending to the day. We now head
for the Gulf of Mexico and our next stop in Houston.
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