With only a few hours of sleep last night, we were up early because we had to be off the ship by 8 a.m. One last look at the TV with the Captain’s log showed that we had sailed almost 33,000 miles from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle.
After breakfast, we went to see the Customs officer on the ship to declare what we had bought (we had gone over our allotment) – and we dreaded that. Well, all our work last night paid off because we gave him our form, and then a separate paper with what we had bought under the categories listed on the form. He was delighted to have it, and happily worked with us. He took off all “works of art” because they were duty free – and lo and behold, we were no longer over our allotment! It was a most welcomed surprise.
We shipped 8 bags (3 boxes, 5 suitcases) with Fed Ex via Holland America (used our credit from not sending any to Ft. Lauderdale), put 4 out in the hall the night before that we would take on the plane, and then our carry-on bags.
As we gathered our carry-on bags and said our final farewell to Dino and Jaswan, we sadly made our way to the gangway to disembark from our “home away from home.” It was a bit teary. We took the shuttle bus to the airport (Sonja and Ken; Diane and Craig were on our bus) and then began the long journey home via Las Vegas.
We arrived in Tampa about 11:30 p.m. local time (8:30 Seattle time), picked up our rental car, and drove the hour back to our new home. While we were so exhausted, we still had the energy to look around and marvel at what had been done (all the renovations) while we were gone. As we got ready to collapse into bed, I put a chocolate mint on both our pillows as a final farewell reminder of a wonderful journey and adventure.
For any of you reading this, I hope you enjoyed the journey with us. Within a week or so I hope to add one last entry – final thoughts, tips for “the next one?!?!”, and all the bodies of water we were in. It has been a true pleasure to share this with whomever wanted to read it.
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