Tropical Contact Highs: Eight Breeze-y Nights in the Southern Caribbean (Part 10)featured
My cell phone service senses were tingling bright and early (well, dark and early), but man, they were far off. I kept waking up, convinced it was my spidey-like senses telling me my reception had returned, and we still weren’t quite within AT&T’s service zones. We finally docked around 5:30 am.
Mom and Stephanie were up around 6:30 am and we all headed up to the Lido deck for a quick breakfast. Sadly, arepas weren’t on the menu anymore 🙁
We headed back to the room for a bit before grabbing our bags and heading down to the platinum lounge (which was being held in the dining room) for debarkation. The entire process passed by in a blur, but we were off the ship around 9 or 9:30 am. We bid adieu to the Breeze and headed into some ring of hell where someone thought a baggage carousel was a great idea to handle luggage for ~3700 passengers. While I’m sure that’s more efficient on their side to not need as many people to arrange luggage in rows, it’s extraordinarily less efficient to have crowds of people trying to spot luggage one piece at a time as it pops out onto the belt.
A porter came over to help us with our luggage and took us through customs and led us outside to help us get a taxi to the airport. Just as our porter flagged a taxi down for us and was helping the driver put the luggage in the trunk while we were stepping in, a woman working for the port pulled us out of the cab because she had a group that needed a cab. I lost my shit. In the nicest possible way because I’m generally non-confrontational, but shit, you guys. Seriously? I don’t care if they slipped you a ten. You don’t pull people out of a cab. You hail another cab. There are tons of them. I’m actually getting twitchy remembering it. So I’m going to move on to the part where we were already in another cab and looking out the rearview mirror with a metaphorical single tear running down each of our faces.
Though Miami International was pretty busy (predictably so for a Sunday morning), we were flying first class, so we breezed through all the lines and found ourselves aimlessly wandering around the airport until boarding time.
So I’ve never flown first class before. I don’t know if Mom has, either. Stephanie has. If she is flying out alone to meet me and Mom in Florida, she’ll usually fly first class. In all honesty, I don’t even remember how she convinced us to do it. But man, what an experience. I was a little freaked out that there was no wi-fi available on the flight (having wi-fi distracts me from my flight anxiety), but it turned out, we didn’t even need it. We had these super awesome lay flat seats that I literally spent at least half of the flight playing around with and every time there was a little bump of turbulence? We just ordered a drink. And to top it all off? There were freshly baked cookies for dessert!
The flight passed by in a blur (and was probably one of the most peaceful flights I can remember – probably because I was distracted playing with the seat) and before I knew it, we were playing spot-my-apartment-building out the window as we flew over downtown Chicago as we approached O’Hare.
And that’s where it ends, friends! We’re off to San Juan tomorrow, so I’ll see you all in a couple weeks with a new Valor review!
