Day -01 - 11/18-19 - Home to Fort Lauderdale

This trip has been in the planning for us for several years. It started out as a booking on the Prinsendam, but that ship was sold and left the fleet in the summer of 2019. When the ship's sale was announced, the Volendam was chosen to replace it, but the new itinerary dropped the Cuba stops. We hesitated in continuing with our trip but decided in the end that the core of the trip was still very appealing. And what was that core you ask? It's 10 days of sailing on the Amazon River! The rest of the trip involves Caribbean ports.

We ended up taking an Alaska Airlines direct red eye flight to FLL (the airport code for Fort Lauderdale) departing at 9:05pm from SeaTac airport and scheduled to arrive at 5:45am. The Captain announced we would have a pretty significant tailwind of 90 knots so we arrived at 5:15am. We were assigned premium economy seats and I slept about half of the flight.  

After arrival in FLL and collecting our luggage, around 6:15am we caught a free shuttle to the Ramada on US84. Because we were so early we couldn't get into our room but after a small breakfast we fell asleep outside on the pool lounge chairs. If it wasn't for the buzzing on my chest from my cellphone announcing the call that our room was ready, I would have probably slept the rest of the day.

After checking in, I called our cruise friend, Larry, and he drove over and we enjoyed a wharf side Seafood lunch at the Rendezvous Restaurant.


After lunch Larry dropped us off at the nearby Secret Woods nature park. I found this 57 acre hidden gem and it's a wise use of unspoiled park land surrounded by commercial development . Just google it for more details. We spotted lizards, a small blue heron, a pair of ibis', and a few squirrels. No blue crabs were spotted but ostensibly are there.




It was a half mile walk to the Ramada where we watched a few hours of the impeachment hearings. I probably nodded off during some of it! We enjoyed a light dinner at the hotel's restaurant before returning to the room to watch the Voice and The Late Show with Steven Colbert.

Tomorrow we'll take a shuttle to the ship and begin our 46 day voyage. Stay tuned as we begin this adventure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 18 - 12/07 - Belem

There are a number of directions today's post could take. But my chosen path is to set the stage with a familiar expression which is repeating itself on this cruise. It's simply, when life gives you lemons, it's time to make lemonade. And today's post will be longer than most. Our day started with a leisurely breakfast as we weren't meeting with our Cruise Critic group until 8:45am near the Main Stage where Dan V had prearranged tender tickets for our group of 27. Just after nine we were ushered down to the tender deck where we boarded a local large tender, Jubilee which was later pulled from service. It was about a 15 minute ride to the dock and just as we arrived, a local boat cut us off from our docking position. So we bobbed in the water until an official waved off the offending captain, a HAL tender departed, and we tied up and disembarked our passengers. Later we learned that local traffic has priority over cruise ship tenders regardless of wh...
Read more

Day 01 - 11/20 - Fort Lauderdale Departure

Image
I believe in Fairies We started our day with a breakfast in the hotel and watched more of the impeachment hearings until just before our 11am checkout time. After checking out we were scheduled on an 11:30am shuttle to the cruise terminal. However there were 7 ships in port with some 16-18k passenger transitioning off the system and a similar amount boarding and many guests were waiting for shuttles so ours left an hour late at 12:30pm. At the cruise terminal, we elected to keep our one roll on piece of luggage with us which turned out to be a good move. The 4-5 star check-in line was pretty long but we began to see fellow cruisers we have sailed with previously. The check-in went smooth with no health forms or yellow fever vaccine documentation required but we had To surrender our passports. We headed for the gangway and at the security desk on ty g we ship our cards wouldn't work and we were directed to the alternate security desk where the guard indicated our room had been...
Read more

Day 14 - 12/03 - Parintins, Brazil

Today's blog has four distinct themes. And they all made for a very memorable day. I love the smell of Diesel in the Morning The Volendam sailed overnight down river and pivoted 180° and assumed a position in the middle of the river facing upstream where the thrusters and drive screws aided by GPS kept it in position all day off the little town on Parintins. The river is a muddy brown color with lots of vegetation debris floating down the river at about 7 knots to unknown destinations. We didn't have specific plans other than to walk around the town. So we took our time to get ready and have a good breakfast. We made our way up to the Ocean Bar on deck 5 to get released to a tender. Just as we arrived, the 4 & 5 Star group was released and we made our way down to the tender platform where we saw that our tender vessel would be one of the local double deck river boats. We boarded it and climbed the steep stairs to the upper deck.  One could walk right up to the wheelhou...
Read more