- The Journey Begins – The 2018 Grand World Voyage
- Leaving San Diego for Fort Lauderdale
- Arriving in Fort Lauderdale and our first day
- Fort Lauderdale – Day 2
- Day 1 – The Adventure Begins
- Day 2 – Our First Sea Day – Abba Fabulous!
- Day 3, Georgetown, Grand Cayman
- Day 4, At Sea En Route Puerto Limon (San Jose), Costa Rica
- Day 5, Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
- Day 6, Transit the Panama Canal
- Day 7, Fuerte Amador, Panama
- Day 8, At Sea
- Day 9, At Sea
- Day 10, At Sea
- Day 11, At Sea
- Day 12, At Sea
- Day 13, At Sea – Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 14, At Sea, Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 15, At Sea – Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 16, Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia
- Day 17, At Sea
- Day 18, Avatoru, Rangiroa, French Polynesia
- Day 19, Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
- Day 20, Mooera, French Polynesia
- Day 21, Bora Bora, French Polynesia
- Day 22 – At Sea
- Day 23, Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands
- Day 24, At Sea
- Day 25 – Alofi, Niue
- Day 26 – At Sea – Crossed Dateline – Jan 29th GONE!
- Day 27 – At Sea
- Day 28 – At Sea
- Day 29 – Auckland, NZ
- Day 30 – Tauranga – 3 Feb 2018
- Day 31 – Napier
- Day 32, At Sea – Super Bowl Monday
- Day 33, Port Chalmers, Dunedin
- Day 34, Fjordlands National Park – Milford Sound
- Day 35 – At Sea – Enroute Sydney
- Day 36 – At Sea
- Day 37 – Sydney, Australia
- Day 38 – Sydney, Australia
- Day 39 – At Sea
- 2020 World Cruise Possibilities
- Day 40, Hobart, Tasmania
- Day 41, At Sea
- Day 42, At Sea
- Day 43 – Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island
- Day 44 – Adelaide, South Australia
- Day 45 – At Sea
- Day 46 – At Sea
- Day 47 – Albany, Western Australia
- Day 48 – 21 Feb Perth
- Day 49 – Perth Yarn Crawl
- Day 50 – At Sea
- Day 51 – At Sea
- Day 52 – At Sea
- Day 53 – Benoa, Bali
- Day 54 – Benoa – Bali
- Day 55 – At Sea
- Day 56 – At Sea
- Day 57 – At Sea
- Day 58, Puerto Princesa
- Day 59, – At Sea
- Day 60, Manila, Philippines
- Day 61, Manila, Philippines
- Day 62 – At Sea
- Day 63 – Hong Kong
- Day 64, Hong Kong
- Day 65 – At Sea
- Day 66 – At Sea
- Day 67 – Phu My, Vietnam
- Day 68 – Siem Reap (ms Amsterdam at Sea)
- Day 69 – Siem Reap
- 2020 World Cruise – w/detailed dates
- Day 70 – Singapore
- Day 71 – At Sea
- Day 72 – Phuket
- Day 73 – At Sea
- Day 74 – At Sea – Enroute to Sri Lanka
- Day 75 – Columbo, Sri Lanka
- Day 76 – At Sea – Enroute to the Seychelles
- Day 77 – At Sea
- Day 78 – At Sea
- Day 79 – Victoria, Seychelles
- Day 80 – At Sea
- Day 81 – At Sea
- Day 82 – St Denis – Reunion Island
- Day 83 – At Sea
- Day 84 – At Sea
- Day 85 – At Sea
- Day 86 – Maputo – Safari Day 1
- Day 87 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 2
- Day 88 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 3
- Day 89 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 4
- Day 90 – Cape Town, South Africa
- Day 91, Cape Town, South Africa
- Day 92 – At Sea
- Day 93, Walvis Bay, Namibia
- Day 94 – At Sea
- Day 95 – At Sea
- Day 96 -Luanda, Angola
- Day 97 – At Sea
- Day 98 – At Sea
- Day 99 – Crossing the Equator
- Day 100 – At Sea
- Day 101 – At Sea
- Day 102 – Banjul, Gambia
- Day 103 – Dakar, Senegal
- Day 104 – At Sea
- Day 105, Praia – Cape Verde
- Day 106 – At Sea
- Day 107 – At Sea
- Day 108 – At Sea
- Day 109 – At Sea – April 23, 2018
- Day 110 – At Sea
- Day 111 – San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Day 112 – At Sea
- Day 113 – At Sea
- Day 114 – Fort Lauderdale
- 2018 World Cruise Entertainers
Fort Lauderdale – Day 2
There is a very nice breakfast in the lobby of the Embassy Suites. We always prefer a room service breakfast but that is not an option here. Most hotels where we stay around the country have some sort of buffet style breakfast in the lobby in lieu of a delivered room service breakfast. We have started carrying a cafeteria style tray with us, so I can go to the lobby and load up the tray with plates and drinks and bring them back to the room. I will be bringing it with me on the cruise to help with some self-service room service from the Lido Deck.
After breakfast we spent the morning looking thru some of our bags and reviewing what we packed and trying to remember if we missed anything of major importance. We didn’t discover anything significant missing. Good news!
Weather Improves
Poor weather continued this morning with high winds and rain showers making the prospect of going outside very uninviting. The weather improved shortly after noon when the clouds cleared, the sun came out and it stopped raining. It was still very atypical Florida weather: blustery (23 mph wind) with temperature in the 50’s. But we expect no sympathy from the folks who are going thru a real cold spell with subzero temperatures in much of the USA.
One of the good things about this location is that we are right across the street from the Southport Shopping Center. We didn’t need to specifically get anything, but we wanted to look around and see if there was anything we may spot that we just couldn’t live without for 4 months.
There are quite a few shops within a half mile of the hotel and we went thru 4 of them in about 90 minutes before we headed back to the room. Even though the sun was out, the high winds did not encourage you to spend too much time strolling around.
Cookies!
We did find a couple items that we just couldn’t live without – Two boxes of Knotts Berry Farm shortbread cookies – I mean running out of snacks on a cruise ship?? I guess it could happen!
While taking this picture we noticed our nice view and spotted the ms Koningsdam at Terminal 4 over at Port Everglades – off further in the distance was the Prinsendam and the Veendam, but we couldn’t make them out very well from this distance.
We enjoyed dinner this evening at a local seafood restaurant: Kelly’s Landing. Joining us were 3 other folks who are joining us on this knitting cruise. It was nice to share experiences and enjoy some good New England style seafood. Service was prompt, the food outstanding with modest prices – an excellent value.
The adventure begins tomorrow
Our great adventure starts tomorrow, and we are looking forward to a wonderful cruise. We will be back in Fort Lauderdale on April 28th and spend a couple of days here before we board the Crystal Symphony to ride back to the West Coast. We had originally planned to stay aboard the ms Amsterdam as we did in 2016, but she will be in the shipyard for about 12 days and once we saw the timing of the Crystal Symphony we decided to give her a try and see what its like on a Crystal ship.
A few notes about the blog. You will find one of the Menus labeled Cruise Blogs – links to my previous cruises as well as a map view with links to the current posts for this cruise. If you are interested in finding what happened in any particular port, you can go to the map index and select the marker for the particular port of interest.
You will also find a table that lists the complete itinerary, with a link to each day’s menu, the daily “When and Where” program and the name of the entertainers in the Queens Lounge. That page also has a link that shows the route of this entire world cruise along with markers that list the name of the port along with the date of our visit.
This entry was posted in 2018 Grand World Voyage, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, North America, USA
Good to see you will be giving Crystal a try, Crystal Symphony is a lovely ship and has just come out of major dry dock. I am sure you will enjoy the knitting programme that is part of the very good enrichment programme – or you may want to try another activity (do knitter ever tire of knitting 🙂 )
Interestingly her sister ship, Crystal Serenity is in FLL this Friday (after a very chilly visit to Charleston today)
Let me know if you have any questions on Crystal
Looking forward to following along on your adventure
Thanks for following. We are looking for to our first cruise on Crystal. We have heard so many wonderful things about that line.
Have a wonderful cruise will follow along till Sydney then will be playing poker with you. Are your friends from 2015 onboard they were from California ? Say hello to Donald and Margaret they have the same accent as us
Hey Sandra, Yes, we are with Rick and Margaret. Great table of Texas Holdem…..Looking forward to seeing you again.