Full Day At Sea To Florida

A small post today, sorta. Tomorrows may be even smaller unless I decide to write during flights. We do have 5 to 8 hours of layovers. It sounds worse than it is since we will be time traveling backwards, gaining hours. So you never know, I may get into a "need to pass the time and just write" mode.

Today and into this evening we need to start packing and wrapping up our awesome vacation. Getting our bags together for them to take tonight and so on. That is the hardest part of the trip for me I think. Planning for the final morning and what stuff you need since our bags will be long gone. Not to mention what the fuckin' TSA will "let you" take on board.

It is a full day at sea as the title suggest and we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida early Sunday morning, 6:00 a.m. I think they said yesterday and can start getting off the ship around 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. If I remember correctly.

I set us up with "EZ Checkout" so we get off earlier and have transportation to the airport already in place. All charges go straight to my MasterCard so it's simple. Since I already have funds for that in place we owe zero at the end of this trip! The best way to end a vacation in my opinion, no debt.

I also set it up so we don't have to deal with luggage until we get back to Reno. They pick it up from our room tonight as usual but it goes straight to the airport to go back to Reno so we skip lugging it around and checking into the airport, it's all done for us. Even our airline ticket boarding passes show up in our room tonight, sweet! For the measly $40 fee I thought it was totally worth it.

Anyway, last night we had a small buffet snack for dinner as planned. Those massive Margaritaville nachos really did a number on us, we were stuffed until nearly 10:30.

After the buffet we watched Back To The Future at the theatre under the stars out by the big pool, well the last quarter of it anyway. Then we came back to the room and Cicely just relaxed and read her book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and I played on the iPad and relaxed. I want to read that book next by the way, very interesting from what Cicely has read me from it and described.

More of the same today, relaxing and planning for one last dinner at 8:15 with our awesome dinner guys, Jigger and Dimitri, aka Mario & Luigi as they called themselves on Italian night, and it was actually fitting ha ha.According to Dimitri there will be a cool baked Alaska parade tonight for dessert.

Seriously though they entire crew has been awesome and we appreciate all of their amazing service, hard work, recommendations and jokes. Same goes with Renee and his crew. They have made our room amazing day and night ending every evening with chocolates on our pillows.

It's a little colder today so we may sit by the pool or sun from our balcony a little. We are on the port side of the ship so the sun has been behind us the majority of the trip because of the direction we are heading.

This afternoon at 3:00 we are going to a wine and cheese tasting event we have wanted to attend and signed up for on Tuesday. Should be a lot of fun learning about different wines and cheeses.

My ears are still full of sand and I am sure I will keep finding it for several days after the trip in various places on me and in my luggage, clothes, etc. It will be hard to walk on dry land for a week or so as usual also but it's all part of the experience, last time our room was much suckier so it moved way more, we may recoup faster this time.

I managed to get my vile of sand from every location we went too as planned, sweet! I think if we go to Europe, Ireland and places like that I will need to get some pebbles or something in place of the sand. I just have to be careful because they don't want you bringing back soil that may be contaminated or something, can't really blame them for that.

This trip I hope my sand makes it through customs and disembarkation on Sunday with the X-rays and sniffer dogs. I think they are mostly looking for pot and stuff though. Fuckin' airline TSA better not mess with it either! I had a note they searched my luggage on the way to Florida. I hope they enjoyed all of my clean socks and underwear cause its all used this time suckers!

Alright I think that is about all for today unless something comes up that I want to add to the post. We are sad the trip is ending because its snowing and cold in Reno from what my dad and sister have said in texts, but we are excited to see Oggy on Sunday and give him lots of hugs and kisses! Lets hope mom hasn't driven him nutty.

"Vacation has a funny way of making you appreciate everything you have at home" -Curt Baker 2012

Photo: Looking off the balcony, early morning