Jan 6

 

This is our final day at sea before we arrive in Miami tomorrow morning.  It's packing day for most and we had already folded many of our clothes in preparation.  For some reason, there were 3 lectures during the day, 2 from Terry Breen and one from Cheryl Sprague.  One of Terry's talks was on the discovery and history of coffee and we found it quite interesting.  She finished with a tasting of  3 coffees she had bought on this segment.  One was from Brazil, one from Barbados and one from Trinidad so we could sense the differences caused by climate, altitude and soil.  Pool deck lunch was a seafood extravaganza with quite a variety.  There was a chocoholic tea time followed by redemption of all our "reward cards" earned from trivia, games etc.  We had invited Lindsey Alley to join us for dinner and we had a great time sharing life stories and became friends.  There was no show since everyone would be finishing their packing to set suitcases in the hallways by 11:00pm, but ours were ready so Pat made $200.00 profit at blackjack.  The clocks were turned back 1 hour to EST and we went to sleep.

Jan 7

 

The ship sailed into Miami beginning around 5:00am and we were tied up at the dock at 6:00am.  We went to the Compass Rose for our final breakfast where Pat had eggs Benedict and I had baby lamb chops.  Departures were scheduled to begin at 7:45, but a jackknifed semi caught fire on the causeway to the port blocking all traffic for some time.  The stevedores who  were to unload the suitcases for 700 guests and 60 crew were stuck on the mainland and didn't start unloading until around 9:00.  Regent had a car to take us to the Fort Lauderdale airport and we were in the second group to disembark.  We got our luggage and went through Customs without any questions and our car was ready.  We think the driver had another pick up on her schedule because she kept the pedal to the floor the whole way in the rain.  It was scary but we made it.  We chose FLL to pick up our rental car because it's easier to get out of then MIA and cars at MIA were at a premium price due to the Alabama - Notre Dame game this evening.  The rain let up by the time we got out of the metro area and the 3 1/2 hour drive went well.  We got home and the house was in good shape.  We had 3 months' of mail stacked up on our dining table and 90% of it was trashed without opening.  It was a long trip since we left Oct 16, but we could easily have continued on if we didn't have doctor and dentist appointments scheduled.  Next big trip starts in 8 weeks.

THE END