Woken this morning by everybody else getting off the ship. I’d booked car hire for noon so there wasn’t much point in being the first off, would’ve just ended up sat in downtown Fort Lauderdale waiting for it. Free coffee if I wait on board, and a little more comfort.
I did get out onto the aft deck with my coffee. Three other cruise ships in sight, it’s tourist season here both on land and heading out to the Caribbean and other places. Our ship was in a side channel running parallel to the ocean, a thin strip of land providing elemental protection. The channel had small boats occasionally travelling up it but the main route out had container ships, trimaran ferries and lots of small boats going through.
I saw my first wildlife but didn’t have my camera. I’m not even sure what I saw. Two foot long, swimming in the channel, the sort of brown that could be a mammal or a fish. It looked like a fish, it behaved like a fish but it had no markings, no dorsal fin and its rear fins were horizontal in the water. But they did look like fins. Maybe it was a nearly dead fish, trying not to float on its side on the surface.
After it had passed the ship I returned to my cabin, an escape from the harsh sun, my hat packed into my suitcase because I’d be indoors or driving most of the day. I had a letter waiting, a printout of my ship account. They’d followed my instructions, reduced the service charge from $14.50/day to just $6/day. No real difference in the grand scheme of things, wont delay my return to paid employment, whenever that happens. Much sooner than it might have, given this trip.
It took an hour to clear US border control, a combination of half the fingerprint machines not working, staff not getting paid and four cruise ships all arriving on the same day. I spent it chatting with another Brit that raised herself the excessive onboard pricing for drinks and other things. She’d also avoided spending any money on board.
Taxis from the cruise dock have a minimum charge of $13, which meant I paid $13 to get to the car hire location. I’d have paid $13 including tip otherwise so it wasn’t a massive uplift and I didn’t ask for change from the $15 I handed the man. I think this surprised him.
The car is a Toyota Corolla, higher spec than the one in Australia. This one has a more modern cruise control that lets you change the set speed but also includes “steering assist” to keep you in a lane and a radar to prevent you tail-ending the car in front. I found that latter feature more dangerous than useful, my brain switching off entirely whether cruise control was on or off.
My plans for the day were simple. Find hotel, do laundry, order pizza, browse internet. The first of those proved by far the hardest, two different sources offering very different addresses for the hotel, my satnav disbelieving both of them. In the end I was following it from one side of Florida City to the other when I spotted the hotel on the other side of the road.
Hotel is a kind description. It’s cheap and nasty, in every sense, especially given that my “King sized bed, no smoking” room has become a twin for smokers. The smell is manageable and the twin beds are both doubles which is quite adequate.
I’d stopped on the way, an outlet mall yielding six new t-shirts for the cost of two, a bonus cardigan and some food thrown in for free. Now that I’ve got it home I’m not convinced it’s a men’s cardigan at all but it fits and I like it so I don’t care.
Laundry was delayed too while I walked across the road to Aldi to find detergent. I’ve bought enough to last around four months, as that’s all they offered. The lady on reception has offered to share it with future guests if I leave with her what I don’t use, but hasn’t offered to pay for it.
Between them Aldi and the outlet mall revealed Florida has a surprisingly healthy supply of one of life’s essentials.
Yes, I’ll be smuggling wafer sticks onto a Caribbean cruise a few days from now.
Ordering a pizza for delivery to my room proved nearly as hard as finding it. US pizza delivery appears to work on telephone numbers and mine doesn’t fit the required xxx-xxx-xxxx format. I did place one order online, only to have it cancelled by a confused pizza place. In the end a skype call to a pizza place a few hundred yards away got a promise of delivered pizza, cash on delivery.
They succeeded too, just the driver thinking that turning up with no change was appropriate for a $22.whatever order and then getting surprised when I suggested some change from my $30 would be considered perfectly normal. While he went to “look in the car, see if there’s any change there” I fended off a duck trying to get to pizza, gentle hissing in place of quacks, one frustrated tap with its beak on my shoeless foot. The driver returned, $2 in his mitts rather than the $5 I’d suggested would be sensible but it wasn’t worth the effort to fight further. I should’ve just reverted to paying by card, letting him deal with that.
Tonight’s hotel is exactly what you expect when you book somewhere for a third of the price being charged everywhere else in the south of Florida. It does though include breakfast, have washing machines that cost $2 a load and has its very own bonus duck.
