Arriving Fort Lauderdale
Low clouds, poor visibility and sitting on the left side of the airplane, made it impossible to see any of the cruise ships that were in Port Everglades as we were landing on our Delta flight around 8:30 am this morning.
The view from our plane while landing: poor visibility and low clouds over Port Everglades
Our connection in Atlanta was flawless – but we shuddered thinking about the unfortunate people who suffered thru that power outage a few weeks back. Can you imagine heading to a cruise only to be caught up in that mess? Horrors!
I did discover on this flight that my Windows 10 laptop could be used to create a mobile hotspot that allowed me to share my GoGo inflight WiFi connection with Judy without a second logon required. Nice, and it seemed to make a better connection than the HooToo I normally used for this purpose. You will find more information on my blog under World Cruise Reference – Cruising Tips and Tricks
I have started a new page on the blog to collect all my information about various ports along with links to other sites with useful information. Information on Port Everglades can be found HERE
Traveling Light? Not today!
Once off the plane we headed down to baggage claim to collect our 5 checked bags. At the bottom of the escalator that takes you into the baggage claim area, we spotted some empty kioks for Carnival Cruise and for Celebrity. No one was hanging around for Holland America passengers so I assumed that the people who bought HAL transfers were on other flights.
On the way to our specific baggage claim area we noticed that baggage carts were available for rent and we were ready to get a couple when I spotted a porter with a very large luggage cart. Hiring the porter would be so much easier than dealing with our bags ourselves so we arranged for him to follow us to our specific baggage claim and help us with our bags.
It was nice to have some help with our bags
All of our bags arrived in the first wave of bags and in a few minutes, we were outside the terminal – still under cover – by the taxi line. There wasn’t any line and the dispatcher summoned a van that would be able to hold all of our luggage. The taxi used a meter and took credit cards. We arrived at the Embassy Suites on 17th Avenue in about 20 minutes with a fare of $15.60 on the meter.
Check in time wasn’t normally until 4PM and since it was only a little after 9 AM we were prepared for a wait. However, a few days ago, Hilton offered us an early check-in option for $25 which I gladly accepted and because of that we were able to check in immediately and were in our room by 9:30 AM.
To recap: Our plane landed at 8:43 and we were in our room in less than 1 hour – that included all the walking, waiting and everything – pretty good day – everything running very smoothly.
The hotel seems to cater to cruise passengers as there was a desk in the lobby selling $9 shuttle trips to the cruise terminals. This is a good price for a single, but if you have 2 or more people, a taxi would probably be less expensive.
After our long night on airplanes and airports, we decided to take a nap and then order in some Italian food from a nearby restaurant called Sarpino’s. The food arrived in less than 1 hour and was very good.
We will relax for the rest of the evening in our room and spend tomorrow checking on everything we packed and probably stop by a few local stores.