Epilog
December 9th: Flying Home
Bob: When we awakened at 6:00 a.m. the Coral Princess had already docked at the Princess pier at Ft. Lauderdale. Dressing quickly, we had a final quick breakfast in the Horizon Court buffet (but no omelet man!), followed by a final walk around Deck 15 as the sun rose in the East out over the Atlantic Ocean. The Queen Mary II was berthed across the harbor from us, and another Princess ship, the Tropical Princess, was just coming into the harbor through a narrow channel. The Tropical Princess was all white and very pretty, but it certainly looked smaller than the Coral Princess. I saw only 3 lifeboats on each side and guesstimated they would have a maximum capacity of 100 persons per lifeboat, so that would put the ship's passenger capacity at 600 or less. Cruising on a small ship like that again might be a lot of fun. I expect we would have to forgo some of the amenities offered by the larger ships and possibly also the really large-scale production shows, but on the plus side we would hopefully get to know the ship's staff and our fellow passengers more completely. Maybe next year. |
Monika: Leaving a ship is always a let down, but we did get up for one more breakfast from the breakfast buffet--Yummy! We did stoke up, since we knew, that for the rest of the day food would be expensive until we reached Wisconsin. We were docked already and saw that on the other pier, the Queen Mary II was also docked at Ft. Lauderdale. We watched the sun rise at the horizon and a smaller Princess ship come into the channel leading into the harbor. It all looked very peaceful |
Bob: We returned to our cabin to gather our belongings, waited in the Universe Lounge until "Red 3" was called to exit the ship, and then disembarked. Gathering our luggage on the dock, we processed through U.S. emigration and Customs without a problem, crowded aboard a Princess-chartered shuttle bus, and took a 10-minute drive across a long bridge to the Ft. Lauderdale airport that is located across from the harbor. While we were rolling along, I carefully checked out the sidewalks to see if we could just walk and pull our luggage from the airport to the ship next time. I saw some sidewalks on part of the route, but there were no pedestrian walkways across the bridge that I could see and walking on the shoulders of the highway while pulling luggage could be downright dangerous. Oh well. Checking our bags, we stripped off our jackets, took off our shoes, emptied our pockets, put all liquids in a little plastic bag, and joined the herd of people being poked, prodded, and scanned through the security gates. Then we had a three hour wait before we caught our plane to Chicago, but Monika used the time to update her journal and I solved a couple of the Mensa crostic puzzles. Although the flight was two hours and 45 minutes long, American Airlines offered only free soft drinks. Anything else came at a price: all alcoholic drinks were $6 as were the sandwiches, pretzels or cheese and crackers were only $4, but that didn't sound like much of a bargain either. Welcome to the Brave New World of domestic flying! We had brought along snack bars expecting just this situation and they staved off the hunger pangs for the duration of the flight. And flying used to be so much fun. Sigh. |
Monika: But then we grabbed our carry-on and waited in the departure lounge until the color of our tags (red 3) was called. We found our luggage without much trouble, went through customs and got on the bus to the Ft Lauderdale airport so quickly that we were at the departure gate a couple of hours before we were due to leave. When we called Lois, she told us that there was a snowstorm up north and she was not sure whether she could pick us up. Well, we decided to worry about that later and were happy when our plane was only 10 minutes late. Food on the plane was expensive, even pretztels cost $3--, however, soft drinks were still free, so I had applejuice to get some calories and we both munched on some granola bars. |
Bob: At Ohare airport we retrieved our luggage and wended our way through an underground maze of tunnels to the bus station where we finally found the bus to Wisconsin. We were both getting rather hungry by that time, but $2.80 for pretzels and $2.50 for popcorn was still too steep for us, so we survived on Tic-Tacs during the drive up to Racine where my sister picked us up. Winter was in full force, so as it turned dark I drove us back on ice-covered streets with the snow blowing and drifting across the highway. |
Monika: When we got to Chicago, we found out that at Ohare it was mainly rain. We called Lois again, and she told us, that the snow had stopped in her area and she was willing to try the 30m minute drive for her to the restaurant at the interchange with I94 were a regional bus from Chicago to Milwaukee would drop us off. We walked through a maze to the bus center and found out that the bus was leaving in 15 minutes. The bus was a nice comfortable interstate bus and the driver was driving slowly but steadily through the worsening weather. But this is the midwest, meaning the interstates are heavily salted at the first mentioning of a snowflake, so there was no problem with ice built up on the road, howerver, the potholes seemed to get larger and larger. We reached the interchange with Route 20 only 15 minutes late, but it was starting to get dark. Lois had indeed made it there and was glad to had the driving of the car over to Bob who brought us safely home. |
Bob: It was a bit of a jolt to have started the morning in sunny, tropical Florida and by evening be driving on icy streets in a blizzard! But all's well that ends well, and once back at Lois's place we finally had a decent meal, chatted a bit, checked our email, and went to bed for a well-deserved rest. |
Monika: Snow may be bad to drive in, but it surely was beautiful seeing the white flakes clinging to the trees and bushes, What an abrupt change, just two days earlier we had been snorkeling in the warm waters off Jamaica and worrying about getting a sunburn. |
