Steve and Cathy's Blog

As we suspected would be the case, we are up early, around 4:00am.  Of course, there is last minute packing of our carry-ons and so forth, but mostly we want to have time to take care of last minute details without feeling rushed.

We had put out our one piece of luggage for collection last night as instructed, and had Red 1 as our luggage tag.  We would begin the disembarkation procedure based on an announcement centered on our luggage tag number.  Oceania has this disembarkation procedure down to a science as I imagine all cruise lines do.

Jay brings our last coffee and croissant at 5:45am (I will miss her smiling face!), and Cathy goes up to Waves at 6:45 for her last cappuccino.  Steve stays in the room to make sure he doesn’t forget anything and takes photos of the Miami skyline (one of which heads up this post and two others inserted below) as we approach the dock.

At 7:30am, we have breakfast in the Grand Dining Room with the O’Dells, the Rosenthals.  Their time to be in Insignia Lounge is 9:00am and ours is 8:15, so we have a light breakfast.  We chat for the last time.  Everybody is anticipating the day and the trip home.  It is a fitting conclusion to our time on Insigniaas we had spent so many fun hours with these great people over the past six months.

Cathy and I leave the dining room right around 8:00, take one more walk around Deck 5, gather our stuff from our Stateroom 7044, and head down to Insignia Lounge to await further instructions.  We run into Pat Watt and chat with her while waiting. U.S. Immigration is running a bit late, so we don’t get our instruction to leave the ship until around 9:00am.  We walk out on to Deck 5 and proceed to the terminal.  General Manager Damien Lacroix and others are at the gangway giving each guest a warm bon voyageas we leave. Damien is a very special individual and makes everyone feel like he/she is the only one on the ship and his good-by is as cheerful as ever.  It is a touching last moment on the ship.

As we head toward the terminal, Steve takes one last photo of our home for the past six months:

We walk into the hall, grab our suitcase and very quickly clear Immigration.  Two young ladies ask if we had anything to declare and Cathy advises that we had purchased less that $800 in souvenirs.  That is it.

Oceania Cruises has arranged bus transportation for us to the airport.  We are directed to our bus, hand over our luggage to be stowed and climb aboard.  The trip to the airport is only about twenty minutes, and the jolly driver gives a little guided tour of what we are passing as we go along, making the journey seem even shorter.

Now we are let out in an area where buses park, and so we aren’t in the main terminal area.  This makes check-in a breeze.  Fortunately, we get one of those clerks that enjoys people and his job.  He is friendly and efficient, and he also gives us a break.  He jokes: “You’re lucky.  I’m in a good mood today, so I will mark the weight of your suitcase down to seventy pounds rather than the actual weight of 72 pounds.  That’ll save you $125.”  We also suspect that because there are two of us traveling with only one suitcase, he sees the logic in letting us slide on the overweight.  He puts a “HEAVY” tag on it and off it goes. Steve also checks a small duffle bag  that he fears might be too big for the overhead because it’s so stuffed, forgetting that we are traveling First Class where such a thing isn’t a worry.

As usual, Steve and Cathy are way early.  Getting through security is a slight hassle, primarily because Steve’s knee brace sets off the x-ray machine, so he has to endure a thorough pat-down and wanding.  It’s maybe 10:30am, so we still have tons of time for our 12:15 departure.  That is fine with us.  We are “depot sitters.”

Cathy goes and buys a snack and shares it with Steve.  By now we are pretty hungry and are looking forward to lunch on the plane.  The plane is on time, we board without a hassle, and are handed a drink even before takeoff.  This flying first class could get to be a habit.  It’s way more expensive that economy, but it eliminates almost all of the misery of modern air travel.  And, of course, we have just spent 180 days being pampered, so this postpones getting back to reality for a few more hours.  Something tells us that we may opt for this first class airline travel again.

The flight is routine. The lunch is pulled pork sliders. Yummy.  Yummy.  At least Steve thought so.  The entertainment selections are infinite.  Steve picks the movie Casablancaand Cathy selects Star Wars Episode Eight: The Last Jedi(but admits to falling asleep after watching for a while).  We actually arrive in New York a few minutes early, around 2:55pm.

Baggage claim is easy, although Steve’s duffle bag got slammed.  Luckily, despite it being torn open on one end, everything is still there. Thankfully our driver (Judi Gallagher, our travel agent, treated us to ground transportation) is right there with a sign and took care of everything.  We hop into his enormous black Chevy Suburban and off we go.

We had a great ride home. Our driver (whose name I am ashamed to say I cannot remember three weeks later) is a very interesting guy.   He is very well informed on a lot of subjects, has one kid in college and one about to go, and does this limo gig only about once a week just for something to do.  We chat so much that we finally find out that he used to work for ABF Freight System, the same outfit where Steve worked for 12 years!  It was a great trip and somehow I would like to get his name.

We arrive home at 5:30pm, which is earlier than we expected.  We walk in to a sparkling clean house, and there is a beautiful croton plant on the dining room table, along with a baguette.  We walk into the kitchen and see a note from Maria and Fiona (thank you for the drawing of Steve and Cathy, Fiona!) welcoming us home.  We open the refrigerator and see that Maria has also provided us with our dinner: prosciutto and a package of brie cheese! Eddie Glazewski has put a 1.5-litre bottle of Crane Lake Chardonnay in there, and Barbara Thompson has given us a gift of flowers and a nice welcome-home note.  To say that we are touched and honored is an understatement.

Despite the heat, we spend the next two hours out on the porch decompressing from the day’s journey. It feels really good to be back in Wallingford, especially after the wonderful welcome we received when we walked into the house.

We have come to the end of our amazing adventure.  We are overwhelmingly glad that we took the trip.  It was everything we had hoped for and then some.  We will write one more post about what we learned, but for now, let’s just say that one lesson we already knew but the trip reinforced: we live in a special town full of special people and we are blessed to live here with them.  It’s great to be home.