Fort Lauderdale and the Sea.

On New Year's Eve, we got up early and took the bus to the airport. 

Denver International Airport

We were headed to Fort Lauderdale for two nights before our Caribbean cruise. Our flights, on Delta via Atlanta, were unevenful. We took a taxi to the Aqua hotel in Fort Lauderdale. The Aqua is a retro type two story hotel, and had a nice feel to it.

We walked to Lulu's Bait Shop for dinner; thanks to Mike for the recommendation. Lulu's is a large informal restaurant, and full of people. Given that it was New Year's Eve, there was a party atmosphere. After dinner, we walked back to our hotel, and were in bed before midnight. It had been a long day.

On January 1st, we spent the day on and off the Water Taxi, which is rather like a hop-on, hop off tour bus. The tour pointed out the 20 million dollar houses, and the superyachts with prices over $100,000,000 US. The excess was palpable. These folks are the 0.001 percent. A significant fraction of the owners were in hedge funds.

Superyacht

We were traveling on the intercoastal waterway. Fort Lauderdale calls itself the Venice of America. The land that the houses were built on was constructed with seawalls and dredging and backfill. This land was previously mangroves. There were finger canals going off from both sides of the intercoastal. We did not observe any barges or other commerical traffic, due to the holiday. There were many drawbridges, which opened on a schedule. Richard chatted with the captain, and learned that our water taxi used a "Z Drive", which was a propellor that could rotate 360 degrees. If the captain needed to go in reverse, he simply rotated the steering wheel to aim the prop backwards.

We got off at Las Olas street, and walked up and down a bit. The street was busy, and was clearly the center of local tourist activity. At one point, we saw three Ferraris in one block! We had an excellent dinner at The Boarding restaurant. We were the only customers, which seemed strange, given that the food was so good, and the Yelp reviews were 4.5 stars. The waitress gave us directions to a nearby gelato place, also excellent. We took the water taxi back to our hotel.

On January 2nd, we took our first Uber car to the cruise ship pier, Port Everglades, in Fort Lauderdale. The driver was a retired army man, driving Uber to make money for a European vacation, which his wife had requested. We stood in various lines to go through the boarding process, but finally got on the ship, the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas. One of the other ships boarding that day was the much larger Allure of the Seas, which held 5000 passengers compared to our ship's 2500. We watched luggage being loaded on our ship up to our scheduled 5 PM departure, and then watched the Allure of the Seas head out in front of us. It was impressive to watch such a large ship maneuver, with bow thrusters, but without a tugboat. We left after the Allure, while a Holland America ship left behind us. We settled into our room, and went to dinner.

Our room attendant is a cheerful Haitian man, Jackson, who is happy to have a job. He misses his wife and two children.

On Day 2, we were at sea, going through the Bahamas, on our way to Antigua. We explored the ship, and settled in to relaxing. Richard, the frugal traveler, was learning how to enjoy a balcony. The crew is very international; the captain is Polish. Almost 50% of our fellow passengers have cruised with Royal Caribbean before.

Richard spent some time playing with his new GPS, a Christmas present from Sandi. Unfortunately, the GPS does not work in the room, due to a limited view of the sky.

We are using Mytime scheduling for dinner, different than the traditional two seatings. We were seated again with the same couple as the first night; he is a heavy equipment operator from Ohio, who likes trip research as much as Richard does.

We finished the evening with the headliner show, the Las Vegas Tenors.

On Day 3, we had a second sea day; the ship was north of Puerto Rico.

In the morning we attended a frequent cruiser event, where they honored people who had cruised on Royal Caribbean for many years.

We attended a brief Cha-Cha class in the afternoon, and continued to explore the ship. Richard took his anti-seasickness pills and started to feel better. Sandi finished her second book.