Where Do I Check In?

      As I type this, Wendy and I are on a cruise ship sailing the Caribbean. Just in time too as an ice storm we missed in Michigan knocked out power to thousands, including relatives living around Ann Arbor. Our home lost power too for a day or so but all is well now, my son reports.

     So we're basking in 70-degree temperatures as the sea passes by our cabin window. But getting where we are now posed a much greater challenge than I expected. We drove from Michigan to Fort Lauderdale rather than flying because, to be honest, I hate flying more than anything. Driving I can do.

    The day we were to board our ship in Port Everglades near Fort Lauderdale I left extra time so we could pull into a park and enjoy a quick lunch before boarding. But after I got off the main expressway, traffic was heavy and I couldn't find any place where we could park our car and eat lunch.

    Nixed that idea but in trying to get back to the main expressway, we drove around a corner and encountered a guard booth.with a gate down across the road. A woman in a security uniform informed us we were at the entrance to Port Everglades. So we went in but we were at the wrong end of the sprawling terminal complex. I had to drive around to find our terminal. I assumed that it would be the same terminal where we checked in last year since it was the same ship line. Wrong.

    My original plan was to leave our heavy luggage at the terminal drop-off point where porters take bags other than carry-ons out of your car and load them with other passengers' luggage onto large carts for transfer to the ship. Then I would park the car where my wife Wendy and I would exit with our carry-ons.

    But when I approached another lady in a security guard uniform, she directed me to the parking garage instead. Oh, well. The garage was nearly full by this time  We had to drive round and round until we got almost to the top. Then we had to take all our luggage out, carry-ons too, and haul them to the terminal ourselves. That was tough, particularly for my wife Wendy and her bad knee.

     Finally we got all the way across the garage and to the street when a crossing guard said what sounded like "APEE?" as we crossed the street.  He didn't speak English that well but I eventually figured out he meant APEX, another cruise ship docked nearby. I told him our ship was the Rotterdam which actually was docked right next to the parking garage. If it weren't for a cyclone fence that circled the parking garage we could just walk aboard.

     But the guard said we were walking the wrong way. We were heading to the wrong terminal.  We had to backtrack along that cyclone fence that circled the parking garage to get to another terminal. That meant another even longer walk back through the garage, still carrying and pulling our luggage.

     As we were following the fence and nearing the garage entrance where cars were entering the parking garage, another woman in a uniform intercepted us and said, once again, we were going the wrong way.  We missed the opening in the fence (it was about a five-foot gap) and were making a long walk even more difficult. Yeah, that's us all right. She guided us to the gate we missed and after one more hike across the drop-off area where we should have left our luggage initially, we checked in for our cruise.

    Anyway, so glad to have that all behind us. Tomorrow we dock and will disembark at a Caribbean island we've never been to before. We don't have a map nor the help of our cell phone navigation system.  What could go wrong?