Glen and I were anxious to go on another trip with our tripping buddies Steven and Patricia Morgan from Albuquerque. The destination this time: a Panama Canal cruise. Glen said it was on his bucket list. Steven and Patricia were willing. I thought now was as good a time as any, so off we went.
Travel day was April 16th. We flew from here to Atlanta and had a couple of hours layover before our flight to Ft. Lauderdale. Glen quickly found an earlier flight and was willing to pay the extra charge for us to move our flight up so we would get to Florida earlier. We knew the Morgans would be getting there earlier and Glen was anxious to play!
We were almost the last ones on the plane and as we got to our seats, we heard someone shouting, "Kimmy!!" We looked up to see what was going on and saw Steven and Patricia sitting half a dozen rows behind us smiling and waving and so happy to see us. That was a fun coincidence to end up on their flight!
We were prepared to have the inconvenience of our luggage not arriving until the later flight and we would have to go back to the airport to pick them up, but not so! Steven's eagle eyes spotted Glen's G&K bag (I was gabbing with Patricia and had my back turned to the carousel and would have missed it.) When Glen pulled up with the rental car, we surprised him with the good news that all the bags had been claimed.
After finding our hotel and changing into church clothes, we were anxious for dinner because none of us had eaten much all day long.
Steven had gotten us tickets to the Ft. Lauderdale Temple open house. It was a very spiritual experience to take the tour of the temple and I am glad he thought of doing that.
My favorite picture outside the temple is this one where our group is posing so nicely--and so is the woman standing next to them.
Next day the cruise began. We got rid of our rental car.
Onto the ship we went.
Beautiful atrium in the center of the ship.
There is always lots of beautiful art pieces displayed all throughout the ship.
Of course it didn't take us long to fill up our plates at the buffet.
My first plate of food.
Glen's first plate of food.
Glen, Patricia and Steven LOVE eating ice cream on the ship.
Funny story--Patricia was so happy to get her cone and as she was holding it up for a picture, the ice cream dropped out of the cone onto the floor. Her reaction was so hilarious!
Good thing all the ice cream was free. She just went back for another one. Here we have the happy people with ice cream in hand.
We pretty much had the upper deck to ourselves for a while. Here's the theater under the stars (or the clouds--whichever).
We found our rooms and as we were talking, Patricia fell onto the floor in a dead faint when I told her I was actually feeling chilly on the ship. This is definitely something different for me. I am usually sweating my head off and she's always cold. Not so this time. I was pretty chilled most of the time we were on the ship.
Glen got busy in our cabin looking at the Princess Patter news and ship schedule to start planning all the fun shipboard activities he wanted us to do.
Dinner in the dining room, of course. This is Glen's bloody meal.
This is my meal.
I loved having a show (sometimes two shows) to attend after dinner every evening.
We got to meet Dan, our cruise director. He and his deputy assistant were pretty funny. I enjoyed laughing at their antics.
We had two days at sea, Friday and Saturday, April 18-19. Glen found plenty of things to keep us occupied.
First thing was walking around the deck of the ship for exercise.
Look who we ran into doing the exact same thing.
Time for breakfast.
These are some of our fellow cruise passengers.
Patricia was all excited to go lay out by the pool. She loves the sun. I don't know how we can be such good friends when we are so opposite.
She and Steven worked their sunning around a couple of games Glen wanted to play. First was Bingo. We got some free Bingo cards and wanted to see if we were lucky. We weren't. We lost.
We had better luck on the Passenger Feud game.
I was glad Patricia let me wrap up with her in her beach towel. It was freezing in that room.
Our team won! Patricia was the happy recipient of a bottle of wine...which she promptly gave to a random passenger who actually consumed alcohol.
That evening was formal dress.
Followed by another good show.
Sea day again. Games around the ship again. Glen talked Steven into going to the Princess Pop Choir song practice. He decided he would forego participating in the egg drop this time. We soon learned it was canceled due to lack of interest.
Burger and fries for lunch.
My least favorite meal of the trip for dinner--some kind of quinoa patties and eggs. Patricia and I both ordered it.
Patricia did her best eating as many pastries and cheesecakes she could fit into the day. Here is her late-night treat at the pastry shop by the casino.
Looking forward to Easter Sunday the following day.
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