On our Way

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Well the year’s almost over so guess it’s time for another cruise and another blog. My friend Lin from work and I planned this trip early this year. Originally we were looking at going Christmas week but she decided she was more comfortable with going Thanksgiving Week and it only needed 3 vacation days. Last year we did a 3 day cruise on the Eurodam which was her first cruise (and first time to even see a cruise ship) so we decided on it for the ship. It was also a Sat to Sat cruise which meant we could fly back the Sat of Thanksgiving week instead of the Sun which hopefully will be less of a hassle at the airports.

Last year we had booked an inside guarantee but got upgraded to a Balcony cabin and she fell in love with the balcony. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend the extra on it this time so we booked an outside guarantee. Well actually she thought we booked an outside but I booked the balcony which really wasn’t that much more with the sale we booked thru as her Christmas present. Now the big surprise was that I was a able to keep the surprise (well almost but will cover that on tomorrow’s entry).

We decided to fly down the night before the cruise since you never know what can happen and this time of year even the weather could complicate things. It was difficult to find reasonable flights though. I finally found a direct flight from CVG to FLL but it left about 5:00 which meant we’d have to leave work early so we headed out about 2 on Friday afternoon. I was supposed to be in a meeting about our company’s move to a new building so planned to dial into it while driving. However, first we had the wrong call in number and after several attempts to get called in finally did but couldn’t hear anything so that didn’t work. Guess I’ll find out what was discussed when I get back.

We hit a bit of Friday traffic but not too bad and since we’d checked in on line it didn’t take long to get our bags checked in. I was right at 49 lbs on mine but only because I’d checked it at home and moved one cube of clothes to my carry on. They’d moved the entire Security checkin at CVG to the upper level (must have been in the past few weeks since I was there recently and it was still downstairs). The line was longer than recent trips but probably because it was the Friday before Thanksgiving week. But we got thru pretty quickly and to the gate with a few minutes to spare. The flight was a bit bumpy but not terrible and with no connections to make we were in Florida in a couple of hours. Our bags arrived pretty quickly and I called the hotel (FLL Hilton) to send the shuttle. It came by not long after we got to the shuttle area but didn’t stop. I guess it was full but they didn’t even bother to stop and tell us that. I tried to find the phone number on my reservation printout but it wasn’t there so eventually headed back into the terminal to call them again. They did finally show up but it was probably ½ hr of waiting.

The hotel was very nice and once we got to our room decided to order room service for dinner instead of heading back out. While waiting for that I got on-line and was able to Skype my fiancé John which was nice as always. He tried to bring up how my secrets were holding up though. Anyway, we talked till our food showed up. We had ordered a steak and extra sides and it was very good. So not too bad of a travel day for our trip but tiring as usual.

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