T. (aka The wife, aka DW (dear wife) in cruise speak) and I are off on a Caribbean cruise… I may have mentioned this before…
There is a plan.
We pack… The plane leaves in less than 4 hours… we haven’t packed… some might think this is an issue… we don’t… we are professionals… If you are not professionals, don’t try this… but it works for us.
Back to the plan…
We fly the red eye to Ft Lauderdale Florida… spend Saturday, Saturday night and now most of Sunday in South Florida… before boarding our ship … it’s a two day get away before THE VACATION starts… what a concept… If we laid one more vacation on this thing I would think we were retired (fat chance)
We will land early Saturday morning in Ft Lauderdale, claim our rental car, and drive south on I-95 in search of breakfast… I have my eye on a couple of places in Miami Beach… Both are modern diners, they are cute, painted pastel colors, and at 9:00 in the morning no one else will be up… we will enjoy our meal.
Having eaten we will resume our trip south, towards Vizcaya, a museum, a house museum (I run a house museum, its my job) and gardens… It is reportedly quite an estate… (T. has been there… I never have, but will be going soon)
Having toured a house museum, we will retreat north towards Ft Lauderdale… we may pause in Miami, in one of their Cuban neighborhoods, or we may speed past on I-95 north…
We have a place to stay, the Riverside Hotel, on the “New River, on Los Olas Ave… By the time we return north we can check in… then wander about… We need wine… there is a good used book store nearby, and there is a house museum nearby (I run a house museum, I like house museums, when traveling I tend to visit house museums ) Actually there at three house museums in Ft Lauderdale… I have visited two, including the Stranahan house, with is one block from our hotel… the third, so far unvisited is nearby, and we will probably visit it, claiming another merit badge on my house museum manager’s uniform (we don’t really wear uniforms… but if we did there would be patches or merit badges for every house visited… but we don’t wear uniforms (we don’t need no stinking uniforms) so we don’t have patches and merit badges, but if we did…)
Sunday, we will find breakfast, find provisions (a couple of bottles of an oaky Chardanay, and a couple of books) and if we haven’t yet visited we will visit Old Fort Lauderdale Village where we will find 1907 King-Cromartie House, a museum of pioneer lifestyle… (and another merit badge, not really)
We were supposed to board our ship, Holland America’s Neiuw Amsterdam, after 1:00… today they announced that boarding was being pushed back to 4:00… they have a tummy virus on board and need to clean the ship up… in an effort to evict the virus (Norovirus… a really contagious intestinal bug.) Appearently we are still planning to sail at 10:00.
We (T. & I) will delay our boarding until 6:00 or so to avoid the crowds, and there will be crowds…
We have a friend joining us on our trip, Tomas, tropical storm/hurricane/tropical storm/hurricane/tropical storm… (repeat) Tomas…
The Weather Channel is covering it… as a special “thing” They have special reports… from Haiti, from Grand Turk (we will visit Grand Turk on Tuesday…)
As of now, Tomas is a Cat 1 hurricane… aka a bad storm that circles…
The Weather Channel has special coverage…”Hurricane Tomas” From their coverage… “There is potential for strengthen, not major strengthening, but strengthening…. Tomas pounds the Caribbean… We are talking about 75 mile per hour winds, maybe… up to 95 mile per hour winds… Big time heavy rainfall… (2” in 24 hours…)
It isn’t really much of a storm… We get harder winds during winter storms, but they aren’t hurricanes… they don’t circle… and more rain in 24 hours… but the storm doesn’t circle… Southern California reaches higher wind speeds with the dry Santa Anna winds… but they don’t circle…
Hurricanes can be devastating… just look back to Andrew in 1992 and Katarina in 2005… but this is not Andrew or Katarina… Tomas is dangerous, particularly if you are a Haitian earthquake survivor, living in a tent… It that is your life this sucks…
But, if you are on a cruise ship, with stabilizers, buffets, a really nice dining room, an attentive staff, too many bars, a pool, several hot tubs… you may need an umbrella ashore… you may miss a port… but this isn’t a disaster…
But if you are the Weather Channel, and need to fill airtime, calling it a disaster, doing live feeds of 70 mph winds… “Its tearing at the corner of the roof over there”… “look at the lawn chair being carried down the street” or “the water is rising… Its now several inches deep in the street” makes it immediate and real and brings higher viewer numbers….
I am tired of it all, I think I will go on a Caribbean cruise… We have a plan... reports to follow…
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