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This is the last day of the cruise, tomorrow we leave the ship at Ft Lauderdale, and we will head to Miami to spend a few days there.
We have breakfast at the Solarium yet again.
One thing that I have noticed about our American cousins is that they find it difficult to walk anywhere without grasping some form of drink- it’s almost like some form of “comfort blanket”. In the morning a cup of coffee seems to permanently stuck in their hands, this changes to beer or soda in the afternoons. I also notice that after breakfast they leave not only with the mandatory cup of coffee, but also with a bowl of food in addition to their breakfast. I assume that this is to ward off any chance of starvation in the 100 yards from the restaurant to their sun beds.
It is another day of taking it easy. The forecast for today is ”Partly cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms and rain – 81 degrees F” We sunbathe and get a bucket of beers to cool down as well as regular dips in the pool and under the showers
We eat lunch in the
solarium and have a bottle of wine, we are running out of time to use up the wine package that I bought prior to the cruise - this will call for some serious wine-tasting in the time left!!
The afternoon is sweltering despite the adverse forecast, we go and take part in the last quiz. We don't do too badly, but had no chance of winning as we had miss 3 days before he realised the competition was on.
We stick it out a bit longer in the sun and then go back to the cabin to get showered and changed for dinner. This being the last night we have a number of forms left in our cabin; Customs, Feed back Questionnaire and the dreaded Gratuities (commonly known as tips). We have envelopes provided for each of the ships staff, I also have vouchers that tell me that I have pre-payed my gratuities. I am not too sure about this, so I drop a text to my travel agent, who confirms that this is the case. I therefore place the vouchers provided into the envelopes and put in a few extra dollars . This is the thing now
in the U.S.,a lot of bills (checks) have "Gratuity included" but there is always a space for "additional tip", so you are tipping on top of tips - from a European perspective it all seems to have got a bit out of hand!
We go down to dinner and after a lot of songs and dances from the waiters we wish them good-bye to our Philippino waiter and Brazilian Assistant Waiter. I ask the assistant waiter to check how may bottles of wine I have left on my package, because I think that I may still have one to go (Having had one with dinner this evening). She comes back and tells me that I have 3 bottles left, I tell her that I don't think this is right, bot she is insistent and we end up leaving the restaurant with 3 bottles of wine!
We put in to action Plan B to get extra spending money by gambling in the Casino Royale. This fails as badly as Plan A. We therefore call it a night and complete our packing. The plan for tomorrow is to one of the first off the ship when it docks as we
will carry our own luggage off. I set the alarm clock for 05:30!!
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