09.09.2012 – 09.09.2012  31 °C

This is it, the last day that three of us are travelling together. Tomorrow I head north to Nova Scotia, Canada and M&D are heading west, firstly to LA for a couple of days, and then home to Tweed Heads!

Our day started super duper early as we had to go and pass thru immigration (before the ship docks). We headed down to the main auditorium and then sat and waited for at least twenty minutes before the immigration guys even got on board—they all helped themselves to a coffee first, didn’t offer any of us a cup! We finally cleared immigration just before 8.30, where we hurried upstairs, grabbed our gear and headed up to deck 9 for some breakfast. It was crazy busy upstairs.

Everyone, had to be out of their rooms by 8.30 so everyone was either on deck 9 or 2 or 3.. Aahh! More nuts was the weather outside. Overnight a big storm had brewed up, so it was bucketing down outside, so everyone is crammed in doors.. Nuts!

We finally got off the boat about 11am (we were one of the last decks to be called) and then it took us awhile to find our gear and work our way out of the ships terminal. D was smart and found us a porter who took us straight thru the queues and out to a waiting taxi.. As D continually reminds me, sometimes you need to spend money in order to avoid headaches—he’s right by the way!!

One thing I had forgot to tell everyone the other day was about our flight mix up.. We stuffed up when our boat arrived back in Tampa and so we all had booked our flights to leave Tampa for Halifax (in my case) and LA (in D’s case) for the day previous. I managed to absolutely get away with the mistake scot- free, because there was an error with my booking and it hadn’t gone thru anyhow.. poor old M&D lost out big time and had to book new flights which of course cost them plenty… DAMN!

Because of the issues, neither of us were flying out til the following day, so I had already booked myself into a motel for the evening and M&D came and joined me for the day and night. We booked ourselves to stay out near the airport. Fortunately there is also a large shopping mall nearby and the courtesy shuttle bus was happy to take us to the mall! I say fortunately, because it is bucketing down rain and we are a good five blocks from the mall. Our little driver dropped us off and picked us up! How lucky are we?

So we headed out to find ourselves a movie to watch. Lunch was a tasty Chinese meal (M&I shared for a grand total of 8 dollars!) and the movie was Lawless. It’s about a group of moonshining running Tennesseans during the prohibition years. Wasn’t too bad and fitted in well with the last bit of our journey, my only issue was the amount of blood and guts.. It’s really not my scene!

Sadly, our last day together ended on a low note.. iHop for dinner.. If you have been an avid Weary reader (Carol and Damo quickly come to mind) you will no doubt remember our very poor restaurant experience in Palm Beach, Florida.. D&I went to an iHop late one night to have some dessert and discovered that you could purchase your dinner and dessert all in one—it’s called chicken and waffles… iHop certainly isn’t gourmet! Anyway, we didn’t have loads of options, we are staying out of the way and it was the only real menu option that was in walking distance.. So we braved the menu once again… As it turned out, we all ordered burgers and fries (the quintessentially American meal for our last meal together in the US) and were all pretty happy with the outcome.. It seems if you just want plain jane, then old iHop isn’t too bad after all!

I said my goodbyes to M&D tonight (I’m getting up far too early in the morning for us to say our goodbyes tomorrow) and our five and a bit month’s of travelling together is all over red rover!

Song of the Day– Bryan Adams, Summer of 69 (or in our case Summer of 2012 but heck its a great song and who cares anyway!!)