Steve and Cathy's Blog

Leaving Miami at Sunset

Well, we left Wallingford at 6:15am on Tuesday, January 2nd, heading to JFK Airport via Liberty Limousine Service. Our driver Ed was actually someone with whom we shared a mutual friend in Jon Walworth.  He and his wife were very active travelers, most recently to China, so his stories about his journeys were of great interest to us and the trip – which, as we all know, can be a nightmare because of traffic, was quite enjoyable and an auspicious beginning to our trip.

One important note about this blog while I am thinking about it. While we are anxious to write a story that is entertaining to anyone gracious enough to read about our trip, this is also a detailed record of our journey written for us personally.  There will therefore be times when I go into way more detail than is necessary if I were just writing a story, so please forgive me for doing so and try to wade through the extra stuff without thinking “Good grief, who needed to know that!?” Thank you for your patience.

To our relief, arrival at Kennedy was right around 8:30 for a flight that didn’t start boarding until 10:40.  We are happy to be “depot sitters,” and sitting around for a couple of hours in an airport is just fine with us. Way better than sitting in traffic sweating bullets worrying whether we would make the flight. Delta fight 1275 left a few minutes late, as we seemed to wander around the tarmac for miles and miles.  Whatever.  Flight was direct, and we arrived exactly at 3pm in Miami.  It was pouring rain, but that 70 degree rainy weather looked way better than the 4 degree sunny weather we had left, so we could hardly complain.

Oceania Cruises met us and conveyed us to the Intercontinental Miami, a 31-story hotel in downtown where the cruise line had reserved accommodations for almost two hundred of us (all the people taking the entire around-the-world trip). We ate dinner at the ToroToro restaurant right in the hotel, to the accompaniment of a DJ playing Latin music along with an actual live bongo player.  The atmosphere was very Miami.  A very Latin flavor as we heard Spanish being spoken as often as English.

As is our habit, we arose early and had breakfast at Ole’, and were finished by 8:00.  We still had heard nothing from Oceania about the transportation arrangements to the ship.  There was a desk in the lobby, but it wasn’t manned on Tuesday or by Wednesday when we completed breakfast.  We asked the bell captain, and all he knew is that they were instructed to collect luggage at 10am from the rooms of us Oceania passengers.

That idea did not sit well with us.  Having spent our career in freight transportation, we knew only too well how a miscommunication could result in the bags not being picked up and thus our leaving Miami without the bags we had brought with us (three suitcases had been sent two weeks earlier via the Luggage Free service).  So around 9:30, we headed for the lobby with our bags, checked out and joined the growing throng of … of … well, of a whole lot of people our age or some way older.  We accurately surmised that we were all heading the same direction.

While Steve spent forty-five minutes straightening out a problem with Verizon about how long we wanted to suspend our cell service, Cathy of course struck up conversations with others in the lobby.  Yes, they were “around the worlders” too, many of whom had made previous Oceania journeys.  Things started falling into place.  There was now indeed an Oceania representative, and Cathy got in line to find out what was up.  Apparently we had not been given a document when we checked in (Steve doesn’t care, because the young lady in hotel reception who made the mistake was adorable and friendly).

Now remember, there are 200 people to be herded on to buses for the trip to the ship.  The paper we needed said that we were on Bus #2 leaving at 12:15.  Ah, things were beginning to clear up.

Buses started arriving around 11:45, but there just were not enough Oceania staff members to provide communications to all these people. No one was told which bus was #1 or #2 or #3 or #4 or #5, including the bus drivers.  It was a confusing madhouse, but all us passengers just said said to hell with the numbers and just made sure that the bus we boarded was indeed going to the ship Insignia.  No one was upset at the confusion, believe it or not.  We knew that we were about to start an amazing journey, and nothing was going to spoil the beginning of it.

We arrived at the terminal about twenty minutes later. Now there were a total of 600 people to board, and I guess there is no way to make this boarding process a breeze.  Our passports were checked to make sure that 1) we had them and 2) we were actually the passengers to board.  We then went upstairs to go through the actual processing.

Okay, so first we have to go through TSA security.  Our last taste of federal government bureaucracy did not disappoint: all the security officers were fully trained in surly and indifferent.  The security process was confusing, made more confusing by the employees refusing to explain what the hell they wanted and what the hell line to get in and which x-ray machine was open.  Oceania ought to complain to the TSA about the treatment their passengers receive, but that would probably only result in worse treatment going forward.

After that bit of incompetence, Oceania takes over and things start to look up.  We are now in a large hall right next to the ship. As we enter the hall, we pass tables full of sparkling wine, coffee and soft drinks, and we hear a live five-piece band playing.  Most people take a glass and continue to the cattle pens to join the hundreds of others.  Cathy and Steve and Veronica and Peter (a couple she met in the hotel lobby that hail from Brooks, Alberta, Canada) decide that it would be way more fun to drink champagne and dance to the band than stand in a long line of people inching their way forward to be processed on board.  No one had more fun than we four.  Something tells me we are going to make good friends with Veronica and Peter.

Eventually, the sparking wine stops flowing (okay, you may have closed a few bars in your time, but have you ever closed a cruise embarkation event?).  We find that there is a special line for just the round-the-worlders, 95% of whom have already checked in, so we are in front of an Oceania check-in person in no time, and board the ship within fifteen minutes of getting in line.  Note to self: keep this in mind for the next trip!

We are now on board Oceania Cruises MS Insignia, our home for the next one hundred and eighty days.