Getting there....

Where to begin….the Embassy Suites in Ft. Lauderdale starts….no let’s back up to text messages prior to boarding the plane. Kay says here plane is not yet in Greenville and therefore she may not be the one to arrive first as we had previously thought. My Delta flight was at the gate when I arrived and we left the gate early. I was in the bulkhead seat in first class and the seat next to me was empty. Just before we backed away from the gate this little girl sits down about Paige’s age. Her mother got the upgrade and sent her to take the seat and stayed in back with her brother. She was in 5^th grade like the twins. Very cute and polite little girl. We arrived FLL early by 10 minutes and Kay’s plane had just landed too. Good timing since she was supposed to have waited about an hour for me to arrive. We met outside between terminals and got a taxi to the hotel. The girl at the desk tells us that our room is not ready and so we go to the restaurant and get some lunch by the pool. A bellhop took our luggage when we found we couldn’t check in. After lunch we go back and our room is still not ready. Everyone else seems to be getting their room but of course not us. The bellhop finally came over to us and asked what was going on and he said he would be right back. He came back and handed us the keys to a room he managed to find that was ready…amazing! We were in the room looking at the ships for 15 minutes when the front desk called Kay’s cell and said our room was ready. Duh! It was on the 11^th floor and we could see the ships from our balcony. We watched some of the ships leave then were going to go to the manager reception to have a couple free drinks and some appetizers. While heading there we came upon a wedding of Democrats being held in the atrium. The grooms name was Pedro and he also wore all white but was fashionably clad in a red tie and red shoes. After having our quota of free alcohol, we decided to choose a restaurant and walk to dinner. The hotel restaurant as we found at lunch was not that good and was very pricey. We headed out the door and started to walk to an Irish pub across the street. While walking to the corner we had a near death experience as a car (obviously texting or otherwise not paying attention to driving) did not realize the light had turned red. With smoking tires and locked brakes he slid halfway through the intersection where we were standing. Embarrassed by his action he decided to turn right to get out of the intersection. We decided maybe it wasn’t a good idea to cross this busy street after all and walked around behind the hotel. There is a large shopping center back there with a Publix, Total Wine and several places to eat. We ate at a place called Duffy’s Sports Bar. The number of flat screen TV’s in that place put us both on stimulation overload but the food was really good and we enjoyed it. Kay is still suffering the residual effects of shingles and tires easily so we went back to the room and went to bed rather early. I had no excuse for being tired but went to bed too. That is not true really because I didn’t sleep at all the night before. We took our time getting dressed the next morning and didn’t get packed up and ready to head to the ship until noon. Since they didn’t let us into the room until check in time, we weren’t going to check out until we had to…so there!