After three years of scarcely going beyond the local grocery store, we girded our collective loins and set forth on our twice-postponed cruise. Mary-Jo wanted to try out the new Celebrity Edge-class ships, albeit with a rather uninspiring itinerary of ports, and the expectation that we would mostly stay on the ship. Which is what we did.
Our preparations went smoothly, except that there were so many reports of lost luggage that we devised a cunning plan to take most of the essentials in carry-on. In fact the original plan was to go carry-on only, but once that became obviously beyond us, it became a hybrid essentials / wanna-take plan, with one shared suitcase getting checked which we could live without. Maybe. Then, on flight day minus 1, amid reports of Air Canada tightening restrictions on carry-on size, we started measuring our cases. That’s when we found that the carry-on Anna got for Christmas, sporting a large “carry-on approved” sticker, was technically oversized. While it might compress to the right size, it would not pass a hands-off laser measurement. And that was where smoothly stopped, and frantic re-packing started.
However, on departure day, there was no snow, the cab was on time and we got to the airport with lots of time to spare. Once we figured out where to stick passports in the scanner (we’ve had that problem before!) we self-checked the sole suitcase and got through all the other formalities with no problems. Well, except that we forgot to stuff our winter outerwear in the outside pocket of the suitcase. Scarcely a line up and no-one even glanced at our carry-on.
Anna and I celebrated clearing the US immigration with the first photos of the trip.
Anyway, we got to Florida intact and so did our suitcase – it even came off the plane in the first group of cases! We found our hotel and took a shuttle to the local mall where the ladies did their thing, some essentials were purchased, and some non-essentials. Finally we had dinner and then ran into the issue we’d had three years earlier – it seems like it’s impossible to find a cab in Florida unless you’re at a hotel or the airport! In the end we walked back, with stops at every bench.
By the next morning, “someone” had decided that what we needed was a second suitcase, so Anna and I walked back, waited for the store to open at 10am, got one, and again failed to find any way of getting a cab, so walked back carrying a suitcase. A quick repack and we were on our way to the ship.
One good thing about carry-on was that we had a bunch of stuff with us getting onto the ship, so we didn’t have to wait for the big cases to change clothes. So we had a decent lunch in a restaurant rather than trying to coordinate three people and a buffet.,
We also had lots of time to look around the cruise dock area and catch some of the little runabouts pottering around. And (on out way out) to wonder if the gentleman with the Celebrity flag also has a bunch of other flags that come out for other ships! That’s Mary-Jo at dinner that night.
Anna and I joined the throngs getting off the ships in Nassau, but by heading up the hill we quickly found some quieter areas and even a friendly knee to take a rest on.
Valentine’s day was at sea. After planning ahead and creating a Valentine’s Day card, I forgot to get it out for Mary-Jo to find first thing. I wasn’t there, because I was up before sunrise every day to walk the deck. Anna joined me on some of these laps and spent some time in the gym on an elliptical machine. We never did make it to a stretch or yoga class. As I recall, that morning was the best sunrise; the bank of clouds happened to move up at the same rate as the sun, so there was an extended viewing period period for perhaps twenty minutes. And me with no camera, but I took one every day afterwards. I’m big on shutting stable doors behind bolting horses.
That day at sea got us down into Mexican waters, and we stopped at Costa Maya. Anna and I went ashore mostly to re-visit Aviarius, an aviary in multiple rooms built above the shops, and joined by suspension bridges. I was a bit disappointed to find they no longer give you a small container of bird food to feed the birds by hand, but seeing the birds up close was still a good trip. Here are a few of the photos; real bird fanatics may want to visit a “birds only” post here. That evening we ate at the Rooftop Grill, outdoors. I was a little apprehensive as I don’t usually like eating outdoors, but it was fine! That evening I captured my one and only sunset, all the other sun-on-the-horizon shots were sunrises.
A short hop, skip and… well, I suppose the ship didn’t do any of those, but the next morning we were in Cozumel. Right opposite the ship was the hotel we stayed at for a week way back, when the hotel was a cab ride out of town. The big thing that looks like a giant thatched hut is the outdoor bar. The sun was quite accommodating in rising in the background – two shots in one.
This was the only port where we all got off the ship. Well, I suppose we did that to go home, too, but you know what I mean. It’s hard to have a beach day if you stay on the ship.
We went to Nachi Cocom beach club again, it’s a very nice area and lunch and drinks are included. All of us were in the water at one time or another, but I made the mistake of changing out of my swim wear after I came out, because when Mary-Jo went in to join Anna, she had difficulty getting back up the the underwater step in the sand. It’s quite steep, and you sink in a bit, which is not nice to wobbly knees. Anyway, I went to the rescue, couldn’t quite reach her hands, took one more step and sunk in. Then a wave came in and my shorts were soaked. It was only later I remembered that my phone was in a side pocket – yes, the side the wave hit. Let’s just say I have a different phone now, and that’s a whole other story.
On the bright side, the first thing I saw after arriving was a pair of pelicans on the dock. Of course, I went to get photographs, and ended up sitting on the dock about ten feet away, taking pelican portraits. Meanwhile, back in the shade, on a comfortable chaise, Mary Jo got out her camera with a 30x zoom and got a shot I’d be proud to call my own, in fact in a short while I probably will be calling it my own! Behind the pelicans were a bunch of Royal Terns who all turned together as the wind shifted. I suppose that’s why they are called terns.
Day 6 was Grand Cayman, which is a tendering port. I had originally planned to go ashore briefly, if only to get a water-level photo of the ship, but Mary-Jo got up early and staked out a fancy canopied deck bed, and I got lazy, so no one set foot in Grand Cayman. That evening we dined at Eden, right above the propeller. The two nighttime looking photos are actually early-morning-walk photos.
And our final day was at sea; all the photos are early morning. I love the peace and quiet at that time of day, and getting in a couple of miles, along with never taking an “up” elevator while on the cruise kept my weight gain down to five pounds.
We kept changing our minds about whether to “walk off” the ship (with our bags) at 7:30am or check our bags, which meant waiting until 8am and having to find the cases. We eventually chose the safer way and it was very efficient – no waiting and we were at the airport with lots of time to spare for our 11am flight. Both flights went very well – the biggest problem was a 40 minute wait for baggage to start coming off the conveyer on our return to Toronto. And the snow held off all week, so we didn’t have our nice neighbours burdened with clearing it. Mind you, the snow has made up for it since, I’ve cleared more snow in the last 9 days than the rest of the winter prior.
All in all, this was a very nice way to terminate our three year vacation hiatus.
