Fort Lauderdale, Florida

April 27, 2023

Our seven sea days passed uneventfully. We had a couple of days where the ship was rocking and rolling, however neither Brian nor I are affected by the motion of the ocean. I used the time to get caught up on my blog. The combination of seven ports in a row, very slow internet, and being under the weather, meant that I had gotten further and further behind.

Fort Lauderdale would be the end of the cruise for those folks who started the trip in Fort Lauderdale. That meant about half the passengers where busy packing and saying goodbye to friends who were continuing on to Los Angeles. We did get about the same amount of new passengers boarding for the last segment of the cruise. They are demographically younger and there are more kids. I think there were 5 children on the world cruise.

Saturday, April 22, was the passenger talent show. Brian participated and was very well received. He sang “You’re My Home” by Billy Joel in front of about 600 people.

We had to say goodbye to new friends we had made. We will miss Darla and Sandra very much. They are really good people and live in both Michigan and Florida. We’re all dressed up for formal night.

One of the couple at our dinner table were leaving, too. Carmen and Steve will be very missed. However, since they live in Riverside, California and have grandchildren in Oregon, we’re very hopeful we’ll meet again. The are standing by Brian in the back row. Also in the picture are Karin and Michael, who live in the Phoenix area. They are also sailing on to Los Angeles, so we get to enjoy their company a little while longer.

It was very busy on the ship when we docked in Fort Lauderdale. Room stewards had to clean the rooms of the 800 people who disembarked and get them ready for the new passengers. We told our room steward, John, just to forget about taking care of our room that day. He did do our nightly turndown of our room, though.

The Princess cruise port is very close to shopping and is not difficult to leave on foot. Brian and I left the ship in search of Mexican food for lunch. We had to get off the ship in any event. All passengers were required to leave the ship and go through customs. We headed off about 9:30 and fifteen minutes later we were starting our walk. Our destination was about a mile away. The walk was quite easy but the weather was hot and humid.

We stopped at a coffee shop for some cold ice tea and sat for awhile to cool down. Brian called his daughter, Keeley, since we now had phone service. The restaurant we had picked out to eat in, La Bamba, was not open until 11:30. We knew there were shops around it, so we headed in that direction. We killed some time by exploring the local Total Wine and More store and went into Publix supermarket to purchase some snacks for ourselves and our dining room waiters.

La Bamba opened at 11:30 on the nose and Brian and I got there at 11:28. It was cool and breezy in the shade and we didn’t have long to wait. Our meal was everything we had hoped it would be. I had a grilled chicken quesadilla and a passion fruit margarita, while Brian had fajitas with beef, chicken, and shrimp along with a couple of beers. Notice the steam rising from the fajita meat in the photo below. Everything was great and we left the restaurant very happy.

From the time we sailed away from Kauai on January 25, we were sailing to places that were new to us. During the last two weeks of this amazing cruise, we will have been to all the countries we are going to dock in. There will be a couple of new ports, but we will be back in familiar territory. Our trip of a lifetime is winding down.