It is Saturday, November 13, our last full day aboard… not exactly aboard as we spent most of the morning sitting on a beach in the Bahamas, but the last full day of vacation…
The dreaded luggage mats appeared on the bed while we were ashore… We must pack this evening… leaving our bags outside our door… from where they will disappear into the bowels of the ship, only to reappear in the cruise terminal tomorrow…
It was a glorious Caribbean day… blue skies, warm water, a breeze… The waters around the island, Half Moon Cay, were those shades of blue only found in tropical waters, deep blue for the deep waters, a azure blue for the shallows, and turquoise near the beach… The clouds are white, never dark grey… the a bright band separating the sea from the green of the islands…
We sat on the beach… I swam… the water was warm…
We returned to the ship about noon, for lunch in the ships Asian restaurant, Tamarind… we had “Japanese” beer with lunch, Kirin brewed in Los Angeles by Anheiser Busch (aka Budweiser), and Sapporo and Asahi brewed by Molson in Canada…
Upstairs people are lounging by the pool… people are getting sunburned… Some are napping, some are behaving badly… This is the way of people on tropical vacations…
Early tomorrow morning our ship will queue up and join the parade of cruise ships entering Port Everglades, aka Ft Lauderdale… take our place in the line of ships, and dock at pier 26 about 6:30 am… The Customs and Immigration inspectors will board, and request our papers… (not ours, as in Tina’s and mine, but ours as in the collective records of all the passengers and crew, this is one of those times that the old saying “We don’t need no stinking papers” just won’t work… you really do occasionally need papers, and we believe ours are in order…) There will be announcements over the ships PA system… people will crowd the public areas around the gang way… impatient to end their vacation… to start the journey home…
I am starting to think about packing, or rather what not to pack… (it is best not to walk off the ship naked, and they get upset if you take the bathrobes, and reportedly, they charge you for them…) Tina is resisting the thought of packing…
Tina and I expect to rise, go to breakfast, the watch the ship wide chaos that is disembarkation… Our flight is late in the day, the airport is nearby, and we are in no hurry… Eventually we will walk off, find our luggage (a much simpler task later when there are fewer bags to search through) present our passports for inspection, declare our $57.00 worth of foreign purchases (the books bought in Porto Rico don’t count, despite what many Americans think, it is legally part of the U.S.)… We will hail a taxi and make our way to the airport… there to check our bags, then sit, and wait for a late afternoon flight… We have a long wait, but not long enough to think about doing something… just a long airport wait… I believe that Ft Lauderdale airport has free internet… if so I will finally post the photos I have been taking… If not they will wait until I get home, and get some sleep, and catch up on work, and more sleep, sleep is important… eventually they will find their way to the web…
Sunday night when we return home, home to California, home to San Mateo, I will quickly fall back into the rush of work… I need to shop, for supplies to make soup… a hearty vegetable soup for the volunteers at work, volunteers who will start to decorate the house for Christmas on Monday, Monday November 16th, 40 days before Christmas… I shouldn’t be surprised or upset… we have seen the harbingers of Christmas on this trip… In Ft Laudedale, the Bass Pro Shop held their “Christmas unveiling” 8 days ago… Christmas Reggae music was heard… more than once… Christmas displays and Christmas decorations for sale in Grand Turk, in Porto Rico, in St Martin… You too can have a tropical Caribbean nativity scene grace your mantle…
So in two days I will be back at work in the Victorian House Museum… preparing for Christmas 40 days before the blessed event… It’s enough to make me dread coming back (not really Laurie…)
As we leave Half Moon Cay, the weather is changing… It is starting to cloud over… to turn grey… The color of the sea is turning from bright blue to steel gray… everything is grey… The seas are rougher, but not the choppy rough of earlier… tonight it’s the long swells of the North Atlantic… all to welcome us back to our regular, not vacation fantasy, world…
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