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

Today dawned rainy. A front is moving through. No worries for me though. I repack, brew coffee and proceed to iron my blouse. It has literally been years since I held an iron and I had forgotten the great satisfaction of watching the wrinkles disappear. I ordered a car to the port and while waiting I met a couple who had just returned from The Nieuw Statendam. They gave me good information and were over the moon by the service on board. 11:30 my car arrived, 11:50 checked in, 12:05in my suite, unpack my carryon and head to the Lido for a pasta lunch. Sail away was lovely all the ship’s horns sounded as we pulled away from our sister ships The Rotterdam and The Zuiderdam as well a a Royal Caribbean and another two I ... 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

It's 72 degrees, and Stasa keeps apologizing for how cold it is. Ha! Stasa made us an amazing breakfast spread of fresh fruit and coffee. We visited with her boyfriend, Esteban, and then we headed to the beach. When we arrived, a breeze was coming off the ocean and really did make it feel kind of chilly. We decided it might not be a good day for a swim after all, and so we went to some of the shops to get beach toys for Grace. We played in the sand. Grace was scared of the water at first, but eventually she ran into the ocean up to her ankles. Ft Lauderdale Beach has a few photo ops for people, including a giant sand snowman and a cute picture frame. So, we might not have been ... read more