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Published: February 10th 2006
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Train to the airport
Delayed flight to Miami
I’m on a cruise ship!
It’s finally cruise time! Anita was nice to get up early and drop me off at the local Marta station so that I could catch the next train south towards the airport. I waited about 15 minutes for a train to come but I had plenty of time to get myself to the airport so I wasn’t going to be time crunched. It took about 45 minutes from the arrival of the train to the check in line up. Not bad!
I went to the self check in kiosk and quickly booked myself in only to find out that my flight was delayed from a 9:01AM departure to a 10:13AM departure. Sigh…more waiting around.
Finally I got onto my flight that wasn’t too full. Our new arrival time was about noon so I made sure to let Laura and Alice know via text messaging about my delay. The girl sitting beside me was quite interesting. She had tons of stuff as carry on and was a little chit chatty. She’s from St. Thomas and has been traveling for the last month around the States…Chicago, NYC,
Lunch in the Windjammer
Alice, Laura and Christie. Atlanta, DC, Miami, Texas etc. She does this about once a year. Soon enough our plane was descending upon the Miami International Airport and we were deplaning. First stop for me before going to baggage claim was a toilet stop. Too much to drink on the flight! I then proceeded to the baggage claim area…carousel 30 as announced on board the plane and displayed on the electronic board. Hmm, the conveyor belt is not moving. In fact I’m the first one from the plane at #30! Where the hell is everyone? Boy are they slow walkers…
About 10 minutes later I have luggage in my hand and I’m off to find a taxi…a big one since I hear there’s lots of baggage to be added…ie: Laura and Alice and their three bags. So I had to wait a little longer for a taxi before heading to the Hyatt to meet up with Laura and Alice and then off to the Port. Our taxi driver Donil was pretty chit chatty. He’s originally from Uruguay but in the States for the last 35 years and has worked quite a bit in Alaska in the late 70’s/80’s. He’s done a lot of
In the Concierge Club.
Laura with her soft serve cone and a "specialty" coffee. Consists of a hot chocolate with a few shots of espresso...or was that cappucino? driving through Canada and his favourite spot is Lake Taslin. He will retire next May and will be moving back with his wife to Uruguay. I betcha if I was in the cab for another 5 or 10 minutes I might have garnered an invitation to Uruguay. LOL
Christie met us at the crew area of the port and we dropped off our bags and Christie basically walked us through check in and registration. She took care of everything ahead of time. She wouldn’t even let me and Laura pay. Alice says to Laura, “It’s for your Birthday.” Then to me, “Bonnie, it’s for your Birthday too.” But Alice, we haven’t celebrated my Birthday together since I was like ten! Lol So that was a very nice surprise!
I guess I should back up a bit. Alice and Christie are childhood friends that used to live down the block from us. I think I was four when we met. Actually they still only live about a block away but in the other direction. So we’ve known one another for years now.
The first thing we did after dropping off our bags in our cabin was to head on up to the Windjammer restaurant for a buffet lunch. As with previous cruises you can’t help but get excited and overeat! Or at least I can’t! The Windjammer has a wide selection of bother hot and cold foods like various salads, soups, pasta, fruits, meat, hot dogs, pizza, fried stuffs, potatoes in various forms and of course a wide selection of desserts galore. Oh yes, and my favourite, the soft serve ice cream cone machines. Laura jokingly said that we have to have one every time we pass by. At least I hope she was joking. Lol They used to have machines on both the fifth and eleventh floors but took out the ones on the fifth because it was competing with the Ben & Jerry’s that you have to pay for.
Anyhoo, after walking around for a bit we retired in our cabin and Alice’s favourite activity of movie watching started. Our bags didn’t arrive yet but it was almost like Christmas to me when they finally did and I was able to see some of my stuff…namely my clothes…that I haven’t seen in months. Plus Laura hooked me up with a bookmaking gig that would mean my cruise is gonna be totally free! So she brought some crafting supplies for me to complete…50 accordion books…call me crazy but it was fun to be crafting again after so many months. Thank goodness my dad precut a lot of the papers so it made my job much easier.
A lot of the afternoon we just lazed about the room which was nice. For dinner we went up to the Windjammer again. It is slightly different eating up in the Windjammer at night in the sense that you are formally seated and stuff but the food selection is quite similar plus there was sushi being served.
The evening was spent watching more movies. Of course we indulged in some late night eating of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream…Chunky Monkey! And also had a late night pizza run…let the eating begin!
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