Easter, and Home!

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Geo: 29.9537, -90.0778

Sunday morning came very early, not only because we got up early to attend a sunrise Easter service, but because we lost another hour of time, having crossed back into the Central Time Zone. Still, we made it up and to a sunrise Easter service upstairs in the observation lounge. It was a really inspiring scene, with the sun just coming up and the ship slowing pulling into New Orleans.

After church, we ate a quick breakfast, grabbed our bags, and headed down to wait to get off the ship. We had an early flight back; in fact, it was set to leave a full two hours before the cruise line's recommended times to depart. As I was nervous we might not make our flight, we elected to use Norwegian's self-embarkation process, whereby rather than have your bags collected the night before and deposited on the pier for you, you simply walk off with your bags. We got down to the atrium, got in line, and in only a couple minutes, the ship was cleared and they allowed us to disembark. We were off the ship, through Customs, and into a cab for the airport in less than 10 minutes, and arrived at the airport a full two hours before our flight. It could not have gone more smoothly.

Our flight made a brief stop in Birmingham -- which was to be hit by those horrendous tornadoes only a few days later -- and we made it back to Baltimore ahead of schedule. Keeping with our track record that day of things going our way, our bags were some of the first off the plane and we were in our car and headed home in record time. ...and we didn't even hit traffic on the Beltway. We made it home immediately before a storm hit, but by then we were already unpacking and -- understandably -- getting ready for bed, as we were all back to school and w6ork early the next morning.

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