Blogs from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States, North America

We drive four hours from St Augustine to Fort Lauderdale. We stopped for a quick bite on the way to Fort Lauderdale. Our hotel is a Marriott AC hotel. I had low expectations since AC is a cheaper Marriott but I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel has a pool with a bar on the third floor. Our room is large with a huge wrap around balcony and two sliding glass doors. Christopher and Brad return our rental car and meet Christie and Laura at the airport. They Uber back to hotel because we do not need a rental car in Fort Lauderdale. Dinner is at a Mexican restaurant a short walk from our hotel. After dinner the kids play in the ocean while we relax on our balcony. Christie is taking four classes and has a ... read more

2KZLago Mar. Not to be confused with that other place with the name backwards. Arrived and called home and settled in for a twelve hour nap. Breakfast was outside and between people watching and bird watching I really enjoyed it. No one here is masked except staff, and me. The guests are either young with kids or older with many families with teens. The resort is full. The prices are resort rates. Not opting for the buffet $18 and not very hungry I ordered off the menu; apple juice $3.25, coffee $3.50 and pancakes $15.75. I asked for just one pancake and when the check came, the waitress has just charged me $6 for the pancake. Kind lady. Next was heading to the airport for my Covid test. I asked the concierge for a taxi and ... read more

Hello everyone. This morning we slept in at the hotel (Red Carpet Inn) until about 8:00. We had a pretty good night’s sleep and we were all ready to start our cruise day. We went with the Sieberts to breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 8:30 but found there was a line of people waiting out the door to get a table. This is the only restaurant nearby, so without a car everyone had to eat at the same place. But we got seated in about 30 minutes and had a good big breakfast. By 10:00 we were back in our room and packing all the suitcases. We lounged around until the checkout time at 11:30 and went to the front of the hotel with our luggage to wait further for our free shuttle to the ... read more

We arose early, as usual. We headed out about 7:30am. Today would be a longer day. About 35-40 miles to the anchorage at Lake Sylvia in Ft Lauderdale. Today would bring many bascule bridges (some on a schedule and some "on-demand"). Unfortunately, more were on a schedule that we had difficulty meeting with a slower boat, heavy tides/current and odd schedules. We ended up waiting anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes for a couple of the 21 bridges. Our departure from the anchorage in Lake Worth, took us past Palm Beach inlet. We encountered our first container ship coming into port (many Tropical containers aboard). This area has a LOT of money. I took just a couple shots of the yachts that hung along the waterway! All in all, it was a nice day. We arrived ... read more

Today is the last day of our vacation and this is the last update to the blog. In summary, we had an uneventful day which was just what we wanted. The Crown Princess arrived in Ft Lauderdale’s Everglade’s Cruise Terminal about 5:00 this morning. By 5:30 they were making announcements to have people report to the terminal and begin processing through US Immigration. Except this was a “crew only” announcement. The ship has been away from the US for a long time and the rules (maybe new ones – who knows?) say that all the crew needs to clear US Immigration. Since they were also needed to help passengers with our needs, they had to get ashore early so they could get back to work before we the passengers tried to leave the ship. We got ... read more