This day marked a farewell to two friends, Ruth and Paul Wilde from UK who sat next to us in the Princess Grill from Vancouver (2nd visit) and were leaving in Fort Lauderdale. I just know I will be friends with Ruth for the remainder of my life such was our connection. Also leaving was Colin & Paula, from UK also shared an table. We all had a table for two but three abreast. Phil and I were near the window. We all got along so well that dining together was so much fun.

We arrived in port at Fort Lauderdale at 6am. Sunrise was 6.20am. We were back in United States.
This meant clearing Customs/Passport Control. Every person on our ship, whether they were disembarking or in transmit (like us) had to leave the ship and go through US Customs, only when all passengers have been processed ashore can those not wishing to stay shore return to the ship.

We assembled in Queens Room deck 2 at 8am where we were assigned to groups. Then groups by number were called to disembark. This processed eased the passage through the Customs Hall and so we all moved relatively smoothly with very little queueing.
From Immigration we joined our waiting coach for our excursion to Miami.

Our tour guide Vivian, coach driver, named Jesus, both were from Cuba originally. Vivian was born in Cuba, raised in Germany and has lived in US for 25 years. She was a lady aged 72 years. Before Covid, she took German tourists around Fort Lauderdale and Miami however German tourists have not returned in any numbers since and so she now takes English speaking tourists. As you would imagine her English was spoken with a heavy accent. Her Spanish (as she conversed with the driver) was fluent.

Fort Lauderdale harbour is lovely, very clean, high rise to the west. A beautiful long clean beach with ‘imported’ white sand runs along seafront.
The drive from Ft.Lauderdale to Miami took about one hour. Traffic was heavy though this was a good day!
Our guide lives in FL and she told us that if she has to meet guests at 9am in Miami, she would leave FL at 6am, pack her breakfast and eat it in her car to ensure she was in the office by 9am, just to allow for the traffic, crazy ??

Port of Miami has the third largest cruise terminal in the world.
This wasn’t a great excursion as most of my photos were taken from the coach but it did give us an overview of Miami. We chose this excursion in the hope I would see art-deco buildings/homes and although we did see such buildings in the area of South Beach viewing from the coach wasn’t ideal. We didn’t drive through any Artdeco residential areas.
South Beach is where Bird Cage, the movie was filmed and where Versace lived and the Cafe News is situated just a few doors from his home. He would walk to the cafe every day to have his morning coffee and read the paper and talk with the locals. He was shot dead outside this cafe in 1997 by a crazy person. Apparently, this guy was in love with him and asked him if he could work for him. Versace twice rejected him saying he didn’t have any skills that he needed nor did he know anything about his business, so one morning the crazy turned up at the cafe and shot him twice in the head. He hid out in a building close-by for three days before being found and shot himself before being taken into custody.
Miami is beautiful, huge marina with super-yachts and very expensive boats moored. Many man-made islands, joined by bridges, privately owned and gated so you cannot enter. Man-made canals where the rich/famous have huge mansions and the locals call Miami, Little Venice because of the canals. The buildings are high rise, the traffic is heavy.

Then we were driven to another area named Coral Gables, affluent and beautiful homes and well-kept shrubbery and palms providing canopy of shade whilst walking about. Many of these homes backed onto canals.

Here we did have a stop to stretch our legs and photo-shot the lovely art-deco hotel and church opposite.
Our guide said many weddings were held in the church and receptions at the hotel. Back on the coach we were to drive to a shopping spot, Bay Market Place and a lunch stop.

Coach Accident
On route to Bay Market Place our coach was involved in an accident. In the city a vehicle did not give our coach sufficient inside space to negotiate a bend and the two collided. No-one was hurt however because it was a business coach our driver was obliged to stay with the vehicle until police arrived. Our guide took charge of “us” and organised a replacement coach. Luckily the second coach on the same tour had just dropped passengers at Bay MPlace so we transferred to his coach for the short drive to Bay Market. We would get back on our coach after a lunch stop of 40mins.

This proved a great stop as we were able to purchase our two Christmas decorations of Miami, have lunch at Shrimp Gump, a franchise diner themed to the movie Forest Gump. It was a great lunch of shrimp, hush puppies (small balls of corn deep fried), Phil had always wanted to taste these, hot chips, and finally the best every barbecued prawns. Phil had a margarita, rated 4/10 (for my sister Toni).

Our original coach was waiting at the appropriate time and place to take us the hour travel back to the ship. (The result of the accident, the ‘other’ party was charged, our driver was not at fault.)

We arrived back at the ship at 3.30pm. It had been a good day, weather was wonderful, 28? so really pleasant without being hot,hot.
Our ship departed at 7pm with two sea-days ahead before we reach Bermuda and port of Hamilton (the capital).