Hearts in Hawai'i
Our Caribbean Cruise (2011)--Day 13
4/29/2011
Heading Home!
Well, our second cruise has come to an end. Patty woke up at 5:00 this morning, and I dozed off and on until 5:45. After packing the final few items, I went out onto the balcony to take some pics as the ship arrived at Port Everglades. We putzed around the room until 7:00, munching a few items I had picked up from the Windjammer, and then headed down to the Coral Theatre. There was a fairly long line there and it allowed us an opportunity to chat with some people from Canada while waiting to get off the ship.
The lines leading to our secured exit where we had to show passports and turn in the Declaration form were extremely long and slow! It didn't matter to us because our flight wasn't leaving Ft. Lauderdale until 3:20 p.m., but some folks in the line were growing somewhat impatient. One guy finally lost his cool and started "beaking" any of the Port workers he could see. It didn't make a bit of difference in his overall process. Hope it made him feel better!
Arriving at the airport, we were told by a Delta employee manning the start of the line leading to the self-serve kiosk that we couldn't check in and get our boarding passes until two hours prior to the flight. Why is this when you can print them off from any computer with an internet connection 24 hours prior to the flight? It made no sense. We were talking about this with a group of ladies and they tried something unique (unique, at least, in my experience); they bribed the employee working outside. I'm not kidding; they actually paid him money to check their bags and print their boarding passes early! When I told him we only had carry-ons, he printed our passes promptly. It didn't cost us a dime.
After getting through security, we had time on our hands. Far too much time--six and a half hours! The Ft. Lauderdale airport isn't exactly the most exciting airport in the world, either. There isn't much to see and only a couple places in the D concourse to eat. We settled for La Cocino--Sbarro, each getting a personal pizza. The food went down and stayed down and that's about the best thing can be said for it.
Man, it's a long damn wait for that 3:20 flight, but finally the time arrives to board the Boeing 757 (same type of plane we had going both ways on this trip). The direct flight to MSP is uneventful. Until the end. We chatted with a lady sitting next to Patty sporting a six-carat diamond ring! She recommended Sanibel Island, which immediately triggers Patty changing her mind--again--on where to go in 2012. Oh, boy. 
About the "almost uneventful" flight; coming in for a landing at MSP, the pilot announced there was a "minor incident" with the airplane windshield and that emergency vehicles would be meeting us at the arrival gae. Actually, it turned out to be a shattered cockpit window which they didn't give us the details on until we had landed! Even with that, we still arrive early enough to grab a ride back on the 7 p.m. Skyline Shuttle (instead of waiting until the 9:45 shuttle. One passenger is late and the driver waited for her which put us 15 minutes behind schedule. He makes up time on the trip north to Duluth--seriously, he was passing everybody and had to be doing 80 mph most of the way back! At our request, he was nice enough to get off on the Proctor exit and left us off at the Little Store where all we had to do from there was walk up one block before we're home by 10 p.m.
Final Thoughts
As I said previously, it is highly unlikely we'll do another cruise in the future. If we did, it would probably be one in the Mediterranean Sea, going to Italy and/or Greeece. Other than that, forget it...
Too many sea days on this trip detracted from what was otherwise an enjoyable cruise. We needs Ports Of Call as often as possible, places where we can go and see something other than the ship.
One positive regarding a Caribbean cruise; it's not a nine-hour flight to get home as it is from Hawai`i. But this is one of the few advantages these cruises have over a vacation in Hawai`i. Some people become "cruise addicts" fairly quickly. We're not amongst them.
From the standpoint of photo opportunities, the cruise we took in 2006 of the Eastern Caribbean far outshown this one. I prefer sailing to places with interesting topography, and the Eastern Caribbean destinations--Puerto Rico, Antigua, St. Thomas, St Maarten--had an abundance of interesting topography.
On to planning our next trip to Hawai`i!
Previous: 4/28/2011--Our Caribbean Cruise (2011)--Day 12
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