Day 1 and 2 - Pre-Cruise Hotel, anyone?

Firstly, our requisite Thomas photo. Because the suitcases were out for a couple of days before we left, he had a chance to sit in each one as it was being packed, but those pictures are becoming commonplace. So we’ll stick in one of him relaxing in front of the fireplace on the mat that Mom made him for Christmas…

This cruise will be Norm and Barb’s first time to many of these ports and also their first experience with the Panama Canal. Our ports include Cartagena (Colombia), Limon (Costa Rica), Aruba, Ocho Rios (Jamaica) and a stop in Gatun Lake (the Canal) to pick up our tour boat for an excursion through the rest of the canal. So, with that intro done, on to the trip -

You know how cruise lines usually offer pre- and post-cruise hotel packages to extend your vacation? Well, we decided to make our own package…

We left home on Wednesday afternoon to drive to Buffalo. Fortunately the snow that fell Tuesday night had pretty much been cleared up from the roads until we reached Hwy 405 to take us to the border, and the flurries started to fall a bit while we stopped at the duty-free, but otherwise the journey was uneventful and took us less time than expected.

Hotel night No. 1 was at the Millenium, the main features of which were: 1) its location across the parking lot from the Walden Galleria Mall, and 2) being able to leave the car in their parking lot for a nominal charge. Our first official meal of the trip was at the Cheesecake Factory - and anyone who knows Barb or the boys will know that the first stop on our way home will be to pick up a cheesecake for Jason and Mitchell (oops, was that supposed to be a secret??).

Thursday morning brought an early wakeup and a very frosty 6:00AM shuttle ride to the airport. After a standard, uneventful flight to Ft. Lauderdale On SouthWest we arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel at about 12:30, checked in and wandered around for a bit. What a difference from the Millenium!



The pool area.  There's also a sand beach and beach volleyball net.


The hotel is near the Florida Turnpike, so it is a fair distance from the beach, but it has a lovely pool area and a huge restaurant/club campus. You could stay here for a week and never eat dinner at the same place twice. All of the restaurants are quite large, but since we were here on a Thursday, there was no crowd to speak of. We had lunch at the Bluepoint Seafood Restaurant, and, except for two ladies at the next table, were the only ones there.

We met Annette and Abe and some friends for dinner and had a fabulous Italian meal at Martorano’s, a Philadelphia-Italian restautant. Every meal was big enough to share and our waiters had a great time dividing everything up between the eight of us so anyone who wanted a taste of another dish could get some.

One of the waiters went to a lot of trouble to try to split the desserts - 1 piece of cheesecake, 2 cannolis and a serving of Tiramisu - into 8 pieces. It wasn’t the neatest job, but everybody got a share and we all had fun watching.

We’ll be heading for the port to board Coral Princess in the early afternoon. Larry spent much of last Sunday afternoon and Monday working to get Commodore status in Princess’ sales education program. This is supposed to come with a lot of shipboard perks. Follow along and we’ll let you know what they are…