Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - The Journey Begins

Friday, February 1 – Getting Away

Departure time finally arrived.  Today we drove to my brother Doug’s home in Granada Hills where we will spend the night before catching our flight to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow morning.

We hit the road just before 1:00 and had a quick sandwich in San Luis Obispo before an uneventful drive down US 101 to my brother’s.  They are expecting a major storm in California today, but except for a few rain showers, we stayed ahead of it.

We arrived at Doug and Janis’s around 4:30 and chatted with them until it was time for dinner.  We had missed Janis’s birthday in January so we took Janis (and Doug) out to the restaurant of her choice for a belated celebration.  It turned out the restaurant of her choice was our favorite Thai restaurant and we had an excellent meal.  After dinner it was more talk, but we went to bed early as tomorrow is an early morning for our trip to the airport.

We did hear that US 101 was closed in Santa Barbara due to flooding and debris flow yesterday after we drove through there so we were glad we left when we did.

Saturday, February 2 – LAX to Fort Lauderdale

Our flight to Fort Lauderdale wasn’t until 10:40 AM, but we were up at 6:30 to allow enough time to get to the airport, get checked in and through security.  Doug and Janis had again generously offered to take us to the Flyaway bus terminal in Van Nuys to catch the airport shuttle so they were up early too.  Thanks so much Doug and Janis, we really appreciate it.

When we arrived at the Flyaway bus terminal, there was a bus loading so after a quick good-bye, we were on the bus and heading to LAX.  The rain had hit the LA area and it was raining pretty hard, but not hard enough to cause problems.  Because it was Saturday morning, there wasn’t much traffic so we got to the airport earlier than expected.  Check in went quickly and thanks to our Global Entry which includes pre-check, we were also though security without much delay.

We hadn’t had breakfast yet so once we got through security, we found a restaurant and ate, then settled in to wait for our flight.  We were told that check-in would be at 10:00, but as the time drew near, we noticed there wasn’t a plane there.  10:00 came and went and finally an announcement was made that we didn’t have a plane because they used our plane for another flight, but they were getting one ready for us, and there would be a short delay.  The short delay turned into a long delay and we didn’t board until just before noon.

While we were waiting, Val noticed the pilot and co-pilot standing nearby waiting, and being the nervous flier she is, she went up to ask them about flying in this weather.  They reassured her that the weather would not cause any problems so that made her feel a lot better.

We finally boarded and were in the air by 12:30 and actually made up some time in flight and arrived in Fort Lauderdale only an hour late, but then we had another problem.  They had given our gate to another flight so we had to sit and wait for them to leave.  The pilot said he was told it would be only a ten minute delay, but that turned forty-five minutes.  The pilot made several announcements and you could tell he was getting frustrated as he finally said he didn’t know what was going on and no one was telling him anything.  Anyway, we finally got off the plane, claimed our luggage, caught a cab and were at our hotel and checked in by 9:00.  It was only 6:00 California time, but we were very tired and went to be early.  Our cruise doesn’t leave until Monday so we have tomorrow to rest up and relax.

We don’t fly very much so I don’t know whether our experience is normal or we just have had bad luck, but in the last two years we have flown three round trips (Fort Lauderdale twice and Hawaii once) and out of the five flights all but one has had significant delays.  Hopefully our return flight will go better, but I’m not betting on it.

Sunday, February 3 – Fort Lauderdale

Today we have a free day in Fort Lauderdale.  We slept in and felt refreshed and well rested when we got up.  After getting ready and puttering around in our hotel room, we decided to go to a nearby shopping center and eat a late breakfast at a place called Joe’s Diner where we had a very good breakfast during our last stay here.

We are staying at the Embassy Suites on 17^th Street, which is close to the cruise port and airport and offers a shuttle service to the port.  Before we left for lunch, we stopped by the shuttle desk and got our shuttle passes for tomorrow morning and then walked over to Joe’s Diner.  The hotel lobby was a madhouse with lots of people leaving on cruises today, hopefully tomorrow it won’t be so bad.

We walked over to Joe’s, but they were very busy so we had to wait a bit, but not too long and soon we were seated.  I have to say, I was a little disappointed as my omelet wasn’t bad, but just not as good as I remembered it from our last visit.  Oh well, it was still a good breakfast so we left satisfied and full.  We wanted to pick up some water to take with us tomorrow so we walked to a nearby market and bought a 12 pack.  Before walking back to the hotel, we checked out a nearby Mexican / Spanish restaurant for a possible place for dinner tonight.

From there it was back to the hotel where we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and taking care of a few last-minute details.  We shipped our two largest pieces of luggage with Luggage Forward so we wouldn’t be bothered with them until we reached the ship, but I hadn’t gotten any updates so I called them.  They assured me it had been delivered to their agent and would be delivered to our stateroom after we boarded.  I also updated the blog so that took up part of the afternoon.

The hotel has a happy hour every day at 5:30 where they serve complimentary drinks and appetizers for guests so we decided to go down for that.  There were quite a few people from our Cruise Critic Roll Call staying here pre-cruise and someone suggested we all get together at the happy hour, but we couldn’t find any groups of people together so after hanging around for a little while we decided to leave and have some dinner.

We walked back over to the Mexican / Spanish restaurant we had seen earlier and had dinner there.  The Super Bowl had just started so the restaurant was pretty empty.  Dinner was not bad, but not great and suffered from the same problem our breakfast did; not much seasoning making the meal pretty bland.  I I don’t know whether that’s a characteristic of the area or just an unlucky day for us, but we were a little disappointed in the food compared to our last visit.

After dinner, it was back to the store for a forgotten item and then back to the hotel for our final evening in Fort Lauderdale.  Val and I aren’t football fans so we usually don’t even bother watching the Super Bowl, but we did watch the last quarter and then called it a night.  Tomorrow is embarkation day and our cruise will finally get under way.