Key Largo, Montego, Baby Why Don’t We Go (Or, a Week on The World’s Largest Cruise Ship): Part Fifteenfeatured

I have this…thing. It’s hard to describe. A cosmic connection to my cell phone, if you will. And on the morning we disembark any ship, I will wake up multiple times throughout the night to see if I have service yet. This time? I was up at two. And then again every half hour until 4:15 am, when my cell phone service was actually restored…and I could see all 150+ work emails waiting for me.

We docked next to the Carnival Freedom and we were all up and out of the room bright and early – before 6:30 am. We said goodbye to Wendy as we left and headed to the Adagio for breakfast.

The Adagio offers an abbreviated breakfast menu on debarkation morning. You can choose from a la carte ordering or the buffet they have set up. We all chose to order a la carte.

French Toast

The Classic

The dining room filled up pretty quickly after we were seated and I couldn’t even imagine what the Windjammer looked like. We headed to the Purser after breakfast. Mom was charged for a towel she’d returned and they quickly took care of that charge. Her charge from Chops was also taken care of. Since there weren’t that many people hanging around the Promenade, we just kind of stuck around there until our number was called.

Our number (zone 20something, I think) was called around 7:30 am. We hung back a bit, but we were off the ship, reunited with our luggage, through customs and in a cab by 8:15 am.

The cab dropped us off at the car rental at FLL and we quickly got our rental and headed to our hotel (The Sheraton on the beach).

We called them on our way and asked if they could accommodate an early check in, but they said they were booked solid and had to stick to the normal check in time of 3:00 pm, but offered to let us check in and take our luggage so we could use the amenities.

The woman who checked us in was incredibly nice (which may have been a result of me being overly polite. It takes nice to get nice!) and she looked up my Starwood Preferred Guest number even though we booked through Priceline. We dropped off our luggage with the hotel and headed towards Boca.

We were off the ship so early that by the time we got our luggage dropped off and drove the half hour to Boca, still nothing was open! It was still too early! We drove around for a bit while Mom showed us all the places she and grandma used to take us to when we were little and we wintered in Florida. Once everything opened up, we did a few hours of shopping before stopping at The Shake Shack for a quick lunch.

We got a call around 1:15 pm that our room was ready, so we headed back to Fort Lauderdale to check in.

The lobby was packed when we got back, so we weren’t lied to when we checked in – the hotel was at capacity. But on that note, we were stuck in a king room for the three of us. The rooms at the Sheraton were musty and a bit antiquated. The walls are pretty thin (we could hear all the action at the pool outside our room) and we could see light creeping in from the door frame, but the room was clean and it was only one night. That said…we’ll go back to staying in Plantation at the Renaissance the next time we’re in Fort Lauderdale. The beach access wasn’t worth the old rooms.

We had our luggage brought up and reallocated the ballace between our bags so all of our bags were under the weight limit for our flights back before heading out to the beach.

The hotel’s private beach access was packed and the sand was thick with sharp rocks and debris, so we ended up walking to the public beach and strolling along there for a bit. We walked a mile or so before heading back to the hotel. It was a holiday weekend, so we kind of expected the crowds, but we didn’t realize how outrageous prices were out there for beach parking. Day parking at the Bahia Mar hotel was $40!

We grabbed the car and headed to Sawgrass for some more shopping. Don’t judge us – it was the last bit of our vacation! The Kate Spade outlet was having an incredible sale, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy another handbag. We made a quick trip to Target for water bottles and muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast and then headed for a quick dinner at TGI Friday’s.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and watched some TV. The three of us in the king bed wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t awful, and we managed a couple of hours of sleep before our early wake up for our flight.

I spent my pre-flight time obsessing over the Turbulence Forecast while Stephanie and Mom rolled their eyes at me.

The flight was generally uneventful and before we knew it, we were back in Chicago.

And I was back home.

And thatttttt concludes our Allure review! And with that…I have to go to bed! I have to be up for our flight to Florida in two hours — we sail on the Breeze on Saturday!