Day 1 of Summer Vacation - Caribbean Cruise: Travel to Florida

We had such a busy summer this year. It was the first summer since living in Arizona that we didn’t go up to Idaho for the normal 4-6 weeks that we had done in previous years. This was our first summer in the hot temperatures on Phoenix. We did some fun day activities, did a short family trip to CA and Ricky and I both had a trip with our friends for a few days. We hadn’t, however, done a big family summer vacation. We were waiting for the construction of our pool to be finished and I had been interviewing for a position with Charles Schwab and needed to be around for that process. Once our pool was finished and I accepted the position at Schwab, I realized we were only really going to have a couple weeks of summer left so I booked a family vacation to the Bahamas. The boys have been talking about going on a cruise, and I needed a vacation that I could truly get some relaxing in, so a cruise seemed perfect. A cruise would also force me to go off the grid since I didn’t add any international plans to my phone or data. We sailed for 7 nights on the Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas to Nassau, St. Thomas and St. Kitts.

We had a relatively perfect travel day on our way to Florida. Neither Rick or I were assigned to sit next to the kids. It would have been their first flight sitting by themselves and I think I was more anxious than they were. Thankfully there are still kind and caring people in this world. The lady next to Lincoln agreed to give up her aisle seat next to Lincoln so that Ricky could sit next to him. She took Rick’s middle seat behind them. The lady next to Logan agreed to switch me seats, taking my middle seat and giving up her window seat so that I could sit by Logan. I fly quite a bit and everyone knows how dreaded the middle seats are so for these women to give up their window and aisle seats for us made my day. It really did mean a lot for me to be able to have the boys sit by one of us. Ricky offered to buy them lunch or a drink on the plane as a sign of gratitude to them but both declined saying it wasn’t really that big of a deal.  It was a good reminder to me that I should do more to help others and do it with a pleasant attitude and a smile on my face like these women did. They were great examples to me.

We stayed our first night in Fort Lauderdale, FL at a Holiday Inn Express. It was close to the docs and had a shuttle to and from the airport. The boys are always super excited to stay in a hotel except this time, they were so eager to get to the cruise ship they didn’t care too much about the hotel. One thing I’ve learned is that customer service in Fort Lauderdale is subpar with almost everywhere else I’ve ever been. Yes, people are nice but everything seems to happen very slowly and their processes are not efficient. We walked to a Wendy’s near our hotel where it took us more than 90 minutes to order, get our food and eat. They messed up our order twice. It was one of those times you just chalk it up to a memory that we will look back and always remember and laugh about.