turnaround

The alarm… yes the ALARM… woke us up at 7:30 this morning. Boo hiss. We were in Fort Lauderdale for ‘turnaround day’ - the day when all the people that took the 7 day version of the cruise get off and the new people for the next 7 day cruise get on. We are doing 14 days, but due to Customs regulations we had to get off for a bit.

We checked thru customs at 9am (thank you Nexus) and started towards the wino’s mecca - Total Wine. It was about a 20 minute walk, in fairly blistering heat, and I’m pretty sure that when we walked thru the doors into the air conditioned cavern, trumpets blew. Oh my gosh!!! Apparently over 6000 kinds of wine, all under one roof. It was amazing. And cool. Of course we needed help picking out two bottles and one of the workers was there to help us.

By 10:15 we were back on the ship and getting ready for a swim. For once we got our choice of loungers and found two perfectly situated in the shade. Our stuff was plunked down on the chair and we splashed in… heaven on a hot day! We didn’t spend much time in the sun though - I still have a bit of burn and Carm still has tons. But we sat on our loungers and watched a Michael Buble concert for a while.

Breakfast was early so we availed ourselves of the dining room for lunch. I had a shrimp/avocado thing, and then beef tenderloin medallions. No dessert.

One of my favorite things to do is people watch, and watching people come through the Piazza the first time is fun. You can tell the new cruisers from the look of astoundment as they pass through the space. It brings to mind my first cruise and how magical it was (thanks Jo Ellen & Don!). So we grabbed a cold beverage and a table to let the world pass us by.

One of the good things about being on the second half of a cruise is being able to miss ‘muster’. Instead we dashed up to the lido deck (pool deck) to get good seats for the sail away party with the Princess singers and dancers. It was all great fun and I even got dragged up onto the stage for a few moments.

Dinner.

Show. It was a repeat for us, but honestly I thought of going again at the late show tonight. ‘Born to Dance’ has dance number after dance number, each one better than the last. They have some really talented people on board, especially a few of the men.