Tag Archives: Florida

Vacation 2019: Day 2 Leaving Port

On Sunday, we started our cruise. We arrived at Port Everglades at midday and quickly made our way through the boarding process. We spent the afternoon getting our internet and onboard messaging set up. Phil and I did a little exploring and checked out the Red Frog Pub before we set sail at 4:00 PM. We hung out on the balcony as we left port with a US Coast Guard escort.

After watching land fade off into the horizon from our balcony, we ate at the buffet on the Lido Deck. We all agreed the sweet and sour shrimp and the salad bar stood out for this evening’s meal. Afterward, we took in The Upside on the poolside movie screen, which finished off the evening.

Drinks for the day included:

Jamaican Sunrise

Rum and Ginger Beer

Red’s Rum Treasure

Beachcomber

The Rum and Ginger Beer is just that—Rum and Ginger Beer with a bit of lime juice.

The Jamaican Sunrise consists of vodka, peach schnapps, red passion fruit juice, orange juice and cranberry juice. This was probably my favorite drink of the day.

The Red’s Rum Treasure contained guava juice, pineapple juice, sprite and two types of rum.

Finally, the Beachcomber was a blend of spiced rum, mango rum, Midori, citrus and pineapple juices.

Vacation 2019: Day 1

This year’s vacation I think will be blog worthy. It might be the last one all four of us take together since the kids are basically all grown up. Of course, if Mom and Dad foots the bill, who knows?

This year’s trip is taking us to the eastern Caribbean. We are leaving from Fort Lauderdale on the Carnival Magic and will be gone for six days. We will stop in Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas, in Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic, and on Grand Turk in Turks and Caicos before heading back to the States.

We started our journey on our 23rd wedding anniversary, Saturday July 13th. We arrived at the airport early and ate at the Barrio Cafe. We are big fans of the original restaurant on 16th Street in Phoenix and the food was just as good. After our satisfying “linner” which included churros and ice cream for dessert, we caught a direct flight from Phoenix to Ft Lauderdale. Phil was hoping we’d fly into Tropical Storm Barry which was pummeling NOLA, but our pilot was a bit smarter than that and we diverted it to the north. We arrived in Ft Lauderdale at 11:30 PM local time. Baggage claim took nearly forever and we finally made it to the hotel just before 1:00 AM. Unfortunately, the room we were issued was trashed and we eventually were given a new room. Everyone finally settled down around 2:00 AM and we got a few hours sleep.

Not the best start to our trip, but it definitely could be worse. At least we don’t have to worry about our four-legged babies, Bandit and Shadow. While we were flying east, my sister Jane and her husband Chris were flying west to spend the week house and dog sitting. I want to apologize to them in advance for the extremely hot conditions forecasted for the week. Of course, she does have full use of the swimming pool so it is not all bad.