I'm back!

Yes, Gene...I'm back! I got home around 10:30 last night and stayed up until midnight to upload the photos. I'm a photo-fanatic!! To answer your question, the two on the right are mine. The one of the left is my daughter's friend.



The trip was great. Traveling as "Mom" made it very different from my other cruises - just as much fun, but very different. I do want to offer some advice and I will do so by means of this educational story. Read and learn!!

We did not fly to Florida the day before the cruise. I booked us a red-eye flight on Southwest from Hartford through Nashville, arriving in Tampa around noon. Tampa Airport is only a 20 minute drive from the pier. I figured we'd be boarding the ship by 1:30.

We were delayed an hour and a half in Hartford due to over-booking of the flight. That was a pain and handled very badly by the Southwest flight crew on that plane, but it didn't interfere with our connecting flight. We arrived in Nashville in time to run to the next gate prior to boarding. THAT'S where the problems REALLY hit.

It was SNOWING in Nashville on Saturday. Yes…snowing! And they don't deal well with snow in Tennessee. (Trust me, I used to live in Tennessee.) It took us nearly three hours to get de-iced, by which time we needed to refuel! I didn't begin to panic until about 12:30 EST. It's an hour and a half flight to Tampa and the boat was scheduled to sail at 4:00. I figured we had to be on board prior to sailing time; the muster drill occurs before the ship leaves port. At about 12:45, I started calling Carnival from my cell phone. I called three times - the final time when we FINALLY got de-iced and were about to take off.

It looked like we'd hit Tampa around 3:15, which would just barely get us to the ship by 4:00 after picking up our baggage. Carnival gave me the telephone number to the pier and told me to call as soon as we were on the ground in Tampa. The Carnival people at the pier contacted their Carnival reps at the airport and gave them our names. The Carnival reps at the airport told us the pier number and we grabbed a cab and flew! We got there around 4:05. We didn't get any photos boarding the ship. We missed the muster drill. We were stressed to the max! But they held the ship and we made it. We were not the last ones on board. There were about six other people on our plane and several more on another late plane. They all took the Carnival transport to the dock. We beat them by taking a cab. I bought everyone a pina-colada as soon as we boarded. (My 12-year-old son's was the non-alcoholic variety!) Talk about close calls!!

We met a couple in Grand Cayman who was picking up the cruise there, having missed it in Tampa, Florida. I was so worried that would be us. I was mentally calculating the cost of four last-minute air fares to Grand Cayman!! My son was fighting back tears (unsuccessfully) in Nashville, sure we'd miss the cruise. These kids had looked forward to this trip for a year! What else could I do??

Carnival was very patient with my panic-filled phone calls and it was nice of them to hold the ship for a handful of late arrivals. The cruise more than made up for the bad start, but what a horrible way to begin a vacation!

ALWAYS fly to your departure city

the day BEFORE your cruise vacation!!

ALWAYS!!!



The diet started today!