DAY 15 - WELCOME TO MIAMI

We enjoyed another lovely evening on the ship last night.

We attended the Farewell Variety Show at 5:00 PM.  The show featured Cruise Director, Gary Hunter, who began his illustrious career as a Ventriloquist and from time to time he will perform his act on board the Crystal Serenity.  Each time we see Gary perform with his puppets we have tears rolling down our eyes from laughing so hard.  In addition to Gary, West End singing star Phillip Brown performed and he has been a hit on the cruise with his performance the other evening and he was brilliant in yesterday's show.  This is his first time performing on Crystal Cruises and based on the guest reaction we assume he will be back again.  There was also a performance by the Crystal Ensemble of Singers and Dancers.

Lead Vocalists Tara Khaler and John Ellis performing the song "Time to say goodbye".

Cruise Director Gary Hunter

After the show we went directly to dinner where we enjoyed salad, a dinner entree and dessert.  

This is the dinner menu from last evening.

We had a wonderful time at the Crystal Dining Room and enjoyed another wonderful meal.

We each started off with salads.  This was the salad that Keith had.

Anne Marie had the Assorted Garden Greens salad.

We each had the Salmon Entree and we also enjoyed a side order of steamed vegetables.

For dessert Keith had some honeydew and Anne Marie enjoyed the sugar free Chocolate Cheesecake.  She gave Keith about half of it and Keith also had a couple of chocolate truffles to celebrate the end of the first voyage.

We will continue to sit at our same table on this next voyage and also have JiJo as our Senior Waiter.  We learned last evening that our Waiter has been promoted to a Senior Waiter effective with the start of this new voyage.  We congratulated her on this well-deserved promotion.  Giuseppe our Headwaiter goes home for a well-deserved Holiday and we look forward to seeing him in a couple of months.  Pierre who has been a wonderful Sommelier will rotate to another section of the Crystal Dining Room.  We believe we are getting Maria as our Sommelier and this is her first contract as a Sommelier.  We've heard good things about her so look forward to meeting her.

As Gary Hunter mentioned this was the "last dinner" for some of the folks but many of them surely will return for another Crystal Cruise so while it's their last dinner of the voyage there is more to come in the future.

A special highlight of the evening was to go to Bob and Glo's room after dinner for a farewell party to give our best regards to their daughter and son-in-law and three grand children as well as Chris and Johnette.  Bob and Glo are wonderful friends and have a lovely family.  It was a pleasure getting to meet them (we had met grand-daughter Becky on a cruise last year) and it has been a pleasure to get to know Chris and Johnette.  

We slept well as we cruised to Miami, Florida.  While the seas had been somewhat rough during the day, they calmed down by last evening.  Today marks the end of the Holiday Cruise and the start of the Panama Canal Cruise.  In total, we traveled the distance of 4,142 nautical miles which equates to around 4,763 land miles and made memories that will last a lifetime.  This was our first Holiday Cruise and it was very special.

We will have a full house on this next cruise.  Approximately, 1,050 guests will be on board and every stateroom is occupied.  This is a much higher number of guests than we had on last years Panama Canal cruise.  Even at this number we don't expect the ship to feel too full given the size of the public space on board the ship.  The specialty restaurants will likely be busy  but we were still able to easily get our reservations.

We began this day as we always do with our respective workouts.  Keith was working out as we made our way to the Port Of Miami and enjoyed seeing the views of Miami all lit up while it was still dark outside.

After his workout he had coffee in the Lido Cafe.  

One of the Lido Deck Stewards, Jun, was setting the outdoor tables and it was quite cold outside.  The forecast had called for lows in the high 30's which was quite a difference from our pre-cruise stay.

While Anne Marie was working out, Keith stopped by the front desk and afterwards he saw, Headwaiter, Giuseppe who was leaving the ship and Keith wished him safe travels and a wonderful holiday.  These are some daytime photos taken at 7:30 AM.

A view of Miami from the starboard side of the ship

A view from the port side of the ship

Two views of the wraparound promenade deck of the ship from the port side of the ship

We enjoyed a nice quiet breakfast in our room.  We then got changed and first walked around the ship an hour before we needed to be out of the room so our stewardess could clean our room.  We know that the stewardesses are very busy on turn around day so we wanted to allow our stewardess to get our room behind her.   We gave our best to some people we know including David and Gary.  We also called our son Eric and our daughter Jennifer and spoke with each of them on our cell phone.

We went to the Hollywood Theatre at our appointed time which was 9:45 AM so that we could be escorted off the ship to the terminal building to clear United States Customs.  We brought with us our passports, our completed customs form and a yellow in transit card.  We could leave the ship a few minutes after 10:00 AM.  The immigration/customs process went very quickly.

This is a busy day for the crew of the ship as it is turn around day.  The majority of the guests disembarked from the ship while a large number of guests joined the ship today.  We understand that there will be over 1,000 guests on the next cruise and that all guest rooms will be occupied.  Many members of the crew assist in various areas.  For example, we saw several of the sommeliers who were going directly to staterooms of guests who needed help with wheelchairs.  Likewise, many members of the crew will assist newly boarding passengers with their carry on luggage and will be involved with the delivery of luggage to each respective stateroom.

Afterwards, we took a taxi into Miami as we needed to pick up some additional items.  Originally, we had planned to walk from the terminal into Miami but that was when we thought we could be off the ship quite a bit earlier than 10:00 AM.  Since we needed to be back to the ship to greet our good friends we opted for a taxi to take us into Miami and then back over to the ship to save on time.  When caught the return taxi from the Four Seasons Miami Hotel where we had just stayed only two weeks ago.  The doorman remembered us and asked us how the cruise was and we said great and that we were heading back to the ship.  


When we arrived back to the Port Of Miami we saw four guests who we know from prior cruises.

Miami was cooler than when we were last there two weeks ago.  Whereas when we stayed there for the pre-cruise and the temperature lows were in the high 60's and even 70's and highs were in the low 80's last evening the low was in the high 30's with a forecasted high of 68 degrees fahrenheit.  This is why when people ask us what the weather will be like in Miami this time of year we say it depends.  It might be hot, warm or even cold such as in early 2010 when the lows were in the 30's and the highs were only in the 40's.

Once back on the ship, we had lunch on the ship.

We toasted the start of this voyage.

Jiri was our Sommelier for the entire 2010 World Cruise

We then we got ready to greet our friends Ricki and David who live  a few hours away in Florida.  They drove  down to visit with us today.  We had made arrangements ahead of time so they could come onto the ship.  We can't thank Ricki and David enough for making the long drive down to Miami to see us.  On top of this drive, Ricki had knee replacement surgery last month.  They are both troopers to come see us and they are wonderful friends.  It was there first time on the Crystal Serenity although they have cruised numerous times on the sister ship; the Crystal Symphony.  We had the pleasure of cruising with them in November of 2010.


Anne Marie greeting Ricki

Seated Ricki in front of Keith and David in front of Anne Marie

Toasting having Ricki and David on board the ship with us.

 Ricki and David surprised Keith with his favorite cookies.  These are rainbow cookies that Keith first enjoyed as a very young boy. He art one of them and loved it.

We then chatted with Ricki and David and also ran into several people we know. We then took them around the ship and we will dine later at Silk Road and will post more about that tomorrow.

As we understand, this voyage will have over 1,000 passengers and all cabins are sold out.  We know of several guests who we have sailed with on previous voyages who will be on this voyage so there will be lots of familiar guests as well as many new guests to meet.  This is part of the excitement of cruising.

TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY.....

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

Keith and Anne Marie