DISEMBARKATION

                              HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

       This is where we started on January 5th!!!  Hard to believe the world cruise is over now.  The ship apparently arrived at the dock at 4:30 am.  I was actually awake but did not know it.  I woke up and remembered we had not received our US Customs form so worried about that and could not go back to sleep.  Found out later that they no longer use any forms.
       We got up at 6:00 to shower as room service was coming at 6:30.  We had to be out of our suite by 8:00 so they could prepare it for the next cruise.  We were initially scheduled to be getting off the ship at 9:00 but I knew that would not happen.  We waited in the card room until they called our color of baggage tag finally just before 10:00.  The delay was due to lack of porters in the terminal to handle all the luggage.  The Port of Miami did not realize this was a world cruise and passengers would have 4 or 5 times the normal cruise.  We were the last group to disembark as the we had a private car to the airports.  They had to hire 41 private cars for all us Titanium members.  I was amazed that they had each persons bags already separated with a big name plaque with our name on it.  Normally we had to search through lots of other people's bags to get them.  So I had Rebecca get in the line to wait for a porter.  It took nearly a half hour but finally got a very nice porter.  Going through Immigration was a snap and the officer was super nice and made some jokes even.  Right outside the terminal was where we dropped our 4 pieces of luggage for Luggage Free to ship home. Our limo driver, Bill, was also right there waiting for us.  He said he had been waiting since 8:30 and it was now 10:30.
       We pulled up at the American Airlines curb side luggage check at the Ft Lauderdale airport at 11:00.  There was no line at the AA bag check but we saw LONG lines at Southwest and Delta so that was good.  We also had "TSA pre-check" so there was no line at the security area.  We arrived at our gate a couple hours early as our flight was scheduled to depart at 1:40 pm.  Rebecca said she was thirsty so I went and got two glasses of wine.  I was very shocked when the bartender said that would be $37.  YIKES!!!  Oh, well.
       We were late boarding the plane and they we had to wait while they fueled the plane.  We had another glass of wine in first class while we waited however.  We departed the gate a half hour late. Inflight we had more wine and a nice lunch.  The first class flight attendant was a very nice guy whose father had been an AA captain also so we got great service.  There were two other couples from our cruise in first class with us both heading back to San Antonio.
       We had a nice flight and still landed at DFW on time.  Our friend, Jane, was to pick us up as we were staying at her house until Tuesday.  I called and she said she was about 15 minutes from the airport.  We headed for baggage claim to collect our 4 checked bags.  I put Rebecca out on the curb to flag down Jane when she arrived.  Our 4 bags were the first ones to come out on carousal.  Jane had arrived about 5 minutes before our bags came out so timing was great.
       Of course we had more wine when we got to her house.  I wanted pizza for dinner as that was the one thing on our ship that was not good.  I was worn out so hit the hay at about 9:00.
       So I wrote most of this on the flight but lost it when my computer battery died.  It is Sunday morning now and I am rewriting it all.  Rebecca, Jane, and I are going shopping today for patio furniture and a bookcase we need for our house.  If we find something we like, we can order it online and have it shipped to Durango.  Jane is also a home decorator so we can rely on her expertise.
       There will be at least one more post.