Saturday 14 April

We're back home!

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Friday 13 April

It was an early start on our last day – up at 5.30am for breakfast when the ‘Windjammer’ opened at 6am.  We needed to be with all our luggage ready to go by 6.45am so that the ‘Tour of Miami with airport drop-off’ could start on time.  There was no immigration check – only the customs form to hand in and they were – as always – very friendly.  We found the tour bus and were on our way by about 6.30am.

The tour was very good, especially for the two in our party who had not visited Miami before.  We had a stop on Ocean Drive and an extensive tour of the main areas including the Biltmore Hotel and the exclusive community of Coral Gables where you have to get agreement on the colour of your house walls, to whom you sell on your house and where you are fined by the local community if you leave your garage door open for longer than 15 minutes at a time!  The photo on the steps is outside the so-called "Villa by Barton G" and now a small private hotel, the spot where the fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot dead on 15 July 1997 at the age of 50.  The tour dropped us off at the airport just after 11am.  The trouble was, our flight was not until 5.25pm and check-in didn’t open until 2pm.  We had some time to kill, so we loitered in the food and drinks court for quite  a while, enjoying public readings of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘A Bear Called Paddington’.  That passed the time happily enough and we went to drop our bags off and get our boarding cards.

Thankfully, Catherine had checked us in online within the previous 24 hours.  They weighed only our suitcases – at no time on this trip have we had anything other than our suitcases weighed.  The heaviest of the bags at Miami was 23.3kg and with the limit supposedly at 23kg, there was not the slightest quibble or murmur from the lady on the desk.  Then it was security – the full Monty – a long wait for the one and only pre-checker to tick our boarding passes through (whilst a number of his colleagues stood round chatting to one another) so that we could go through the main scan – taking almost everything off, including shoes and belts and stand in the scanner with hands firmly clasped above one’s head for 3 seconds.

Even then I was asked if I had a watch on – I said “no” and was told it was probably only the  buttons on my shirt cuffs and was waved along – so much for security - we’d all made it and we then put our lives (and clothing) back together again, ready for the departure gate.  A quick scan of the departures board confirmed that the flight was only 30 minutes late so far!  In nearly 50 years of flying, I can safely say that I’ve never departed early on a flight, although some flights have made up lost time en route!

Thursday 12 April

After clearing immigration – always a trial in the US – we were on to Key West.  We had got through fairly quickly – they only wanted to see our passports and asked each of us a question from our data page in the passport – what’s your middle name, when were you born, how do you pronounce your first name etc.

We had a hop-on, hop-off ‘trolley tour’ lasting about an hour and the whole impression we got of Key West was that it was a truly fab place!

We did some shopping and then had a beer in Willy T’s – finding out later that there was free wifi so the smartphones were out!  Then we shopped some more and ambled back to the ship.  In the cabins we found a voucher for a free drink as compensation for the long delays faced for immigration – the thing was, we weren’t delayed that much – because we had booked the early tour on the trollies, we were ushered to the front of the queue and were some of the first ‘aliens’ to be processed.  We did however enjoy the free drinks.

Wednesday 11 April

This was our day on CocoCay - an island owned by Royal Caribbean. We awoke to find that the sea was as flat as could be and that we were approaching land.  We anchored some way from land and the tendering started.  They used large two-storey tenders like we had had at Cabo San Lucas and each one could move about 200 people at a time.

We went ashore at about 9.45am and there was almost no queuing to get on to the tenders.  It was all very well organised and there was no problem with the fact that Enchantment of the Seas was also at the island.  The environment was very well arranged.  These coral islands lie low and have a surprising amount of wildlife on them – possibly some imported, including small birds like a cross between a kingfisher and a woodpecker, lots of hens and even a colony of fairly shy iguanas!

There were plenty of shady spots so that we could keep out of the rather fierce sun and Graeme spent much of his time on the island in one or more of the many hammocks strung between the fir trees!  On the island was the reception for RCI’s ‘Platinum’ Members and above – those who had amassed a certain number of cruise credits with them.  We are the bottom tier of this illustrious group and soon the free canapés and the rum punch were coming round.  Three of our party managed to get themselves 3 rum punches each and we were also going back and forth to see a young manatee in the sea nearby as she came up for air every 5 minutes or so.

Those who wanted to had a swim and also had an ‘official’ photo taken when on the sea shore.  Strange to tell however, they didn’t want to buy a copy of the photo when they saw that it had been printed off later and was on sale in the ship’s photo gallery.

Then it was time for the RCI’s barbecue lunch and there was plenty of shady seating to take advantage of.  There was also quite a lot of local wildlife with wings which was delighted to share any items which fell to the floor!  We then browsed the ‘market’ stalls for suitable purchases and a T-shirt and a bathing ‘cover-up’ were duly purchased!

Not much waiting time for the tender back and we were soon back on board.  We then had one of our most stunning cruising moments.  Sarah and Chris did the short course on napkin-folding and then it was time for the ‘TV Themes Quiz’.  We decided that this would be a waste of time, as the programmes would all be from US television and that we would be struggling – and we were!  Chris took charge and he and Sarah muddled along with a little help from Elizabeth and an Aussie lady who had decided that her husband wasn’t going to turn up so asked to join us.  Elizabeth chipped in when she recognised the theme tune from ‘Desperate Housewives’ and Graeme scored ‘null points’ as his contribution.

There were lots of gaps on our answer sheet and we felt we were surrounded by groups of committed Americans who definitely knew their stuff!  Then it was time for the marking.  We had scored a fairly pathetic 10 out of 20.  In previous quizzes on board, we had won with 14.5 out of 20 on trivia and had come second with 16 out of 20 on movie themes.  The adjudicator asked who had got 1 out of 20 and then moved upwards.  We and another team had got 10 and no other team had scored more.

We couldn’t believe it – we were in to a sudden-death play-off and Chris would be our man.  The tie-breaker question was – How many series did ‘Prison Break’ run for.  The other team said ‘3’, Chris said ‘4’ and they replied with ‘2’ and Chris then said ‘5’.  They then said ‘1’ and Chris said ’6’ and we had won!  The most inauspicious start had turned to a victory for the noisy English gang and the losing team in the head-to head gave us the dead-eye.  But victory was very sweet.  We had already won plastic RCI key rings from Royal Caribbean’s logo shop’s discontinued stock and now we each had an RCI bum bag to our names and we had become an unholy alliance with an Aussie from Perth on back-to-back cruises!  We changed for dinner with everyone in high spirits.

Tuesday 10 April

We awoke to find we were docking in Nassau – the landscape was all fairly flat.  We had breakfast in the dining room, followed by a lazy spell by the pool (most had gone out on excursion) and a lunch snack in a rather nice sandwich bar at the top of the ship – paninis and tuna melts – very agreeable.

I was reminded that the Duke of Windsor (who had abdicated only a few years previously) was sent away during the Second War to the Bahamas to do a spell as Governor-General of yet another British possession far away – another tough assignment along the lines of being in charge of Tortola – except that I imagine that the party scene will have been better on the Bahamas, so no doubt Wallace Simpson will have been pleased about that!

Then it was excursion time and we chose the line of least resistance as usual and took the easy tour.  We were treated to tours of two very similar forts, plus a visit to Paradise Island.  The contrast between Paradise Island (a lush development with the 5 star Atlantis Resort Hotel and mega private residences) and the main parts of Nassau was fairly stark.

Once again, as on other islands, we were given to understand (in the nicest way) that this was a proud nation, glad to have shaken off the shackles of the beastly colonial British and a nation which has made great strides since independence.  The trouble is – as always – they do seem to have a long way still to go, so what it must have been like in the bad old days of colonial rule, I dread to think!!

One big plus about Nassau was that we suddenly realised that there was free wifi in the shopping centre on the dockside.  We couldn’t get on to it from the ship, but it was OK once in the centre itself and I was able to blog.  Photos took a long time to upload on to it, but it was better than nothing.  The only downside was that it was now 5pm or so local time and everyone was returning to their ships.  We were one of 4 ships moored up and they had two people checking passengers off the dockside and towards the ships.  They also insisted on checking the photo ID of each person which made for very long queues.  Trust me to be right behind an English family on one of the other ships who had decided to go ashore without their passports – considering how the ship’s staff are always telling us not to do that, this pretty much beggared belief!  That delayed me further and it was a bit of a rush to get sorted in time for the only formal evening on this short cruise.

We all turned out in our finery with one of us betting that we would be the only guests we would see that evening in DJs – and we were, except for some of the ship’s staff!  We enjoyed the captain’s welcome reception – strangely held in the theatre – and Graeme managed to get 2 free glasses of champagne out of the event!

The best moment, however, was when we returned to our cabins at the end of the evening to find that we had a very decorative display on our bed with our Royal Caribbean genuine lapel badges – because we were now ‘platinum members’, as we had amassed so many points with Royal Caribbean – wow!!  At the loyalty reception party, they congratulated one American couple who were on their 100^th – yes 100^th– cruise with Royal Caribbean!!  Our cabin steward later told us that there was one chap who lived in Miami who was on our ship in the cabin next door for up to 3 months at a time – and that ship only ever does 3-night then 4-night Bahamas cruises!

Do you like the ladies' hats in the group photo?  Now take a close look!

We stayed there till almost midnight.  CocoCay – our next stop – can only have been round the corner.  The daily newssheet advised us about going ashore at CocoCay – by tender – and we also became aware that we would be sharing the stop with another Royal Caribbean ship – the Enchantment of the Seas, something we weren’t too delighted about as we sensed that it wasn’t a very big place.