May 2006, Caribbean Princess Cruise -- Final Day

Saturday, back in Port Everglades

Distance sailed:
Fort Lauderdale to St. Thomas, 1131 nautical miles
St. Thomas to St. Maarten, 115 n.m.
St. Maarten to Princess Cays, 844 n.m.
Princess Cays to Fort Lauderdale, 276 n.m.
for a total of 2366 nautical miles
(or 2723 statute miles/4382 kilometers)

By the time we got up, the Caribbean Princess was at the dock. They have a very short turnaround to get everything ready for another 3100 passengers who will begin arriving at noon. And we mustn't forget food, water, linens and other items for the 1200 crew members.

Being on the starboard side of the ship meant we could sit on the balcony and watch the unloading and loading. There was military-like precision all over the dock with lots of trucks, skip loaders and people pushing things. There were many near-misses, but nobody crashed into anybody else. It was fun to watch. You cannot believe how much lettuce they take on during the loading.

We had our breakfast and cleared out the cabin. Then we went to find a place to sit while we waited for them to call our group to disembark. The color of the luggage tags we got on Friday is our group color. Each color represents about 200 passengers.

At last, after about an hour of waiting our color was called and we slowly left the ship with our group. After we passed through customs we came to a room as big as a airplane hanger with huge clusters of bags sorted by the tag color. It was mass confusion, but at least our pile of bags was limited to the 200 other people who shared our color.

Soon we found our bags, called the parking lot van to pick us up and were in our car and on the way home.

If you have gotten this far in the story of our cruise don't miss the next post. It is the review we wrote for www.cruisecritic.com.