Mar 24 to Mar 29 - the cruise, before and after

Mar 24, The Florida adventure continues
Down to the "welcome centre" to find out that the shuttle to presentation had left at 8:00. Sheila had specifically phoned them & was told to be at the Welcome Centre by 9:00 to go.
she thinks the woman she talked to assumed we had a car & could get to the presentation on our own. OK, so now the next tour is tomorrow, and the shuttle doesn't return until the afternoon so we have to check out, take our luggage with us & then we have to find a bus or cab to make our own way back into town,(the tour is about 13 miles west of downtown), to connect with the commuter train to West Palm Beach for the cruise ship boarding 1-3PM dragging suitcases all the way.
I am not pleased!

So, on with the day. We phone bus info & get times to get a bus from the Remada Inn location to the Jungle Queen boat tour of Fort Lauderdale's waterways & summer cottages of the rich & very rich. We bought $2.50 all day bus passes. The bus ride took a while & ran down the west side of Fort Lauderdale, we were the only Caucasians on a fairly full bus and it took about a hour to get to the boat dock on the Atlantic beach side. We discovered they keep the bus AC turned on even when they don't need it. Sheila said it was like spending an hour in a refrigerator wearing a light top & Capri pants!

The boat tour was well worth it.I took video & pictures of the summer cottages along the many waterways. They also said that you could go from here to New Jersey without ever going into the open ocean, also you could go south to the Florida Keys as well. The "cottages" were spectacular in size & location. Many were worth multi millions and they are all just vacation homes for people like the original owner of Wastech,his net now worth over 1 billion, also the Firestone family vacation home, owners of Radio shack, Oscar Mayer, Budweiser etc., etc. We saw a house once owned by Gloria Vanderbilt, Johnny Weisemuller, (tarzan in the old movies and an Olympic champion swimmer), Lee Majors place, (million dollar man), a house used by Al Capone as a speakeasy, & other houses owned by big auto dealership owners & CEOs. I'll try to attach some pictures. We stopped at an island for a break for nibbles and a crocodile handling demo. They can close their jaws with a very loud "WHAP". It was a 3 hour tour with lots of info and lots to see.

After that, we caught another bus to try to find the "Downtowner Pub" we had passed on the river tour. It offers cheap happy hour drinks, 2 for 1 appetizers and is the hangout of Jimmy Buffet when he is in town. We found it & Sheila had a couple of very strong vodka & cran/orange drinks for 2.75 each, she had to ask for extra mixer for each one. Finally away to more buses with the same passenger complexion as before. All really friendly people. A couple of times they overheard Sheila wondering about something & chimed in with an answer or help finding something. They are difficult to understand tho, with their southern/Creole accents, soft voices & fast speech! The bus drivers were all great in helping us find our destinations. Well, to bed early as we have to pack up everything and get up early to be down in the lobby with all our luggage for the "tour" shuttle leaving at 8. Apparently we will get breakfast out of it & we have lots of ammo to fire at them regarding their incompetent promoters and all the trouble & rigmarole we have had to put up with. I doubt I will have WiFi on board at least not without a considerable cost, (the onboard internet was 5o cents a min), so it may be a while till next blog, that is if I can get this one sent as the hotel WiFi keeps dropping out. This Ramada is a dump!

Mar 25, getting to the ship
Well, I don't have room to keep going with the next problems in detail. Here is the, hopefully, short version. After being continually assured that there was a complimentary shuttle waiting to take us to our cruise ship in West Palm Beach,(so no need to rush through our presentation) we were told that "yes", there was a shuttle, but "No" it wasn't complimentary. By now our plan to cab a short distance to a mall then bus to the Tri-Rail station & train to West Palm Beach had run out of time. We had to pay $90.00 for a shuttle car to the cruise ship up the hwy at 70 mph+ to make the ship barely an hour before sailing. At which point we hadn't had lunch & all the restaurants were closing for the afternoon till supper. No food available for an hour, 0h the horror, the horror!!!. Not only did we miss lunch, but we missed most of the party leading up to "sail away"!!
Mar 25 to 28, on board our 2 cruises
The cruise was fine, it's only a 1,000 pass.ship so--less of everything we have had on previous cruises. We booked a shore excision snorkeling trip in Bahamian water only to have it canceled due to high wave activity. At the end of the first cruise the ship was good in that they let us leave our big suitcases (2) on board so we walk off with shoulder bags went through Customs, (a breeze), out the front door & back in to check in and board again. Our new cabin was in the exact same position on the opposite side of the ship from the first so we had a large window looking out the other side. For the second cruise we booked the snorkeling with a day, (incl. lunch buffet) at a resort called "Our Lucaya"--a multi acre 5 star resort. The snorkeling was canceled again, due to high winds, so we went to the beach to swim. We had lounge chairs on the sand so were quite comfortable. The water, I must report, was not as warm as the Caribbean, Tahiti, or Australia - in Queensland, but once in, it was fine. It was a nice day.

I have not been covering much ground in the last couple of days as just before the cruise, both my calf muscles were really sore & stiff, we don't know exactly why but are guessing it was due to wearing my sandals for a lot of the walking around in Fort Lauderdale and they have no good heel, arch or foot support.

Tomorrow we disembark, make our way about 5 miles to the Tri-Rail station by cab for about an 1 1/2 hour ride to Ft Lauderdale & then about a 4 mile cab to the Red Carpet Inn, our motel for the next two nights before flying back to California. I hope my next line tomorrow will be: ....an uneventful trip, arrived OK.

Mon Mar 29 disembarkation & down to Fort Lauderdale
Uneventful trip, arrived OK: off ship, took cab to train, train to Fort Lauderdale, bus to Red Carpet Inn, checked in for 2 nights, all OK so far. Good WiFi connection & restaurant on site, bus stop a cpl hundred feet away.