Wanderung 28

The last day of a cruise is often sad as one must pack up all one's stuff and face the certainty of going home the next day where one has to cook one's own meals, wash one's own dishes, make one's own bed, and provide one's own entertainment. And no chocolates on the pillows at night! How sad! (I hear the world's tiniest violin playing "Hearts and Flowers" at this juncture!) But in this case I could look ahead past our drive home to picking up my sister Lois and niece Debbie and then spending a week with them in Williamsburg, Virginia, so I didn't feel too sad.

Besides, during the night I had awakened to brilliant moonshine illuminating the clouds and sea right outside our balcony, which was a breathtakingly beautiful scene. Now that has happened before on cruises, but I had never managed to successfully capture the moonlit scene with my camera. Somehow this time I set the camera up and held steady enough on the time exposures to capture the dark, spooky, and almost impossibly romantic scene of the pure silver clouds floating lightly above the ink-black sea. I hope you enjoy the pictures below as much as I enjoyed that night time experience out on our balcony!

And even better, during breakfast we saw a beautiful sunrise over the coast of Cuba that Monika took with her camera. The north shore of Cuba looked surprisingly mountainous, and the sun rose right over a sharp cluster of mountains that looked like they were right on the edge of the sea, Monika could take both the broad scene of a fiery yellow and red sky over Cuba, as well as close-ups of the marvelously colorful sky right above the mountains. Astonishingly pretty, but also a complete contrast to the monochromatic moonlight shots I had made the night before

The ship's Internet connection was abysmally slow, so Monika gave up on checking our email and we sat out on our balcony for a while. The sun slowly rose in a sky with puffy cumulus clouds and the north shore of Cuba still off the starboard side of the ship, which was our side. Our balcony was noticeably cooler and we were both now wearing long pants and light sweaters, but with those layers added we could sit outside very comfortably. We were looking for whales or dolphins, which are always exciting to see, but all we spotted were some coastal freighters closer inshore.

We walked a half an hour on the Promenade deck to get some exercise--the Coral Princess has a really nice continuous loop around the ship on deck 7 and that made the walking very pleasant. But at 10 a.m. we came back inside for the final ship's sale in the Bordeaux Dining room, which was the typical "get rid of old overstocked items" sale. The usual selection of $10 watches, costume jewelry, hats and T-shirts from previous cruises, and a miscellaneous assortment of women's clothes and men's ties was offered. But they also offered some other oddments, and we picked up a "sailor" Teddy bear for $10 and two small wooden eagles carved in the Alaskan native style for $7 each.

We also attended the last of Greg Wheeler's lectures, which was on "Pirates and Coffee Beans". I was expecting some kind of link between the two, but it turned out to be just two different topics related to the Caribbean Sea area. Still, very pleasant, Then it was time for lunch and an afternoon which I anticipated would be a long, boring afternoon dedicated to packing out bags. Boy was I wrong!

Our first surprise of the afternoon occurred when we purchased the last two of the formal night portraits in the photography shop. As we were exiting, the videographer girl was walking by and said, "Hey, you two won second place in the Panama Poster Contest! Would you like your prize?" Well blow me down! I knew they had videotaped us while we were waving my poster around on the rear balcony of the ship that day, but I was totally unaware of any contest. (Color me clueless!) Still, the young lady somehow recognized us and was nice enough to offer the second-place prize even though we had not been present at the official prize announcement ceremony. In the end we also bought a video package of four DVDs for $15 and considered it an unexpected bargain.

Then I got down to some serious packing while Monika went to finish spending her gambling money and then cash out the rest. But shortly thereafter she came back with $150 of winnings from her slot machine. That was the first time she had ever won a jackpot like that, so she was a bit shocked and very excited. We tucked the money away in the waterproof container for the snorkeling gear to avoid mixing it with our normal household funds, and the then I finished packing while she went to the final art auction.

Monika didn't find anything to buy there, which was probably just as well as we really are running out of wall space at our home, and when she returned I switched over to updating our journal and labeling some of the songs in the images of our song albums that I had loaded on our laptop. Monika began packing and since I seemed to have space in my suitcase, we allocated some of her things into it. But the final packing perforce had to wait until our final bag of laundry was returned after dinner. (I probably should mention that "Elite" status on Princess Cruise Line entitles you to unlimited free laudry services, which allows us to pack far fewer things and "wash as we go", so to speak. If we had to PAY for our laundry, it would have cost us $150 - $200, so we would have used the shipboard self-service laundromats instead.)

Although we had packed a decent amount into our last bag of laundry, Monika was able to fit all her things in with no problem and I just had to use the expansion zipper to give me enough room for my stuff. That made it fairly easy to roll off the ship the next morning, carrying our snorkeling gear, computer, and cameras, and trailing our luggage behind us. The Prius started right up and we were out of Port Everglades and well on our way North by 8:00 a.m. The drive back home to Virginia still lasted two days, of course, but the roads were interstate highways and the weather was good, so we made good time. Traffic was also light except right in the Northern Virginia area where we started to hit the serious congestion that characterizes the Washington Metropolitan area. Still, we arrived home shortly after sundown on the second day, and could once again sleep in our own bed and dream about all the things we had seen and done during our "Warm Winter Break". We hope you have enjoyed our journal as much as we enjoyed taking the trip!