This morning at 0630 we arrived at Port Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Florida on the last full day of our Cunard Transatlantic cruise. Tonight we will sail about 200 miles south to Fort Lauderdale where Bob and I disembark along with 394 other passengers. No doubt even more will board the ship for its onward journey around the whole of South America.

I started the day with a distinct lack of glamour when I visited the Laundrette to put on a mega bag of washing. There is one on every floor of cabins and they have a certain reputation as a hotbed of inter-passenger discord and even – yes!!! – fighting! Women have hit each other with irons! Some have put chocolates into the tumble drier of a machine hogging fellow passenger…. it’s not a place to transgress. God help you if you aren’t back in time to get your clothes out of the washer or dryer as soon as the programme ends….

Anyway, I was up there at 0730 as it opened, bagged a machine, set it going and then disappeared to go and get ready for the day. Went back at 0815 with Bob on the way to breakfast to change from washer to dryer. By then there were several other people in there. All as mad as bags of frogs. Barking nuts all of them. One man seemed determined that he was first in there that morning and that his wash would end before mine. He proclaimed it loudly several times…. I adopted an expression of British Cool which would have been more successful if he hadn’t been British too….. But then again, he was a clear Northerner…… The other guy was an American who had clearly no idea at all how a washing machine worked but made a brave stab by pressing every button. I had to prompt him twice to put some powder in. He did it in the end but the machine had been running a while…..

We scuttled off to breakfast and were pleased to see blue skies and the glittering coast of Florida right outside, together with quite a few cruise ships including the very beautiful Disney Wish which was alongside us. We had no intention of going anywhere today. We are lucky to have 5 weeks to explore Florida, so no need to go anywhere on a day trip today. After breakfast, we picked up our dry washing, all was good, no chocolate in our drier. Then back to the cabin to gather our things for the US Immigration inspection.

It was all handled very smoothly. People on early tours had been taken off in groups first from abut 0830. Then people who were going ashore independently, also taken off in groups of 50, then people with afternoon tours. We were told to come to the restaurant at 1045 together with all the other passengers not going ashore and that we would be taken off as a group. This happened, we got through with the bare minimum of queuing, all very straightforward and cheery and then we had to wait in the terminal lounge while Immigration saw evidence that every passenger on the ship was “off”. Once that was done we reboarded. The crew also all had to go through a similar process of course.

By 1230 we were up on the aft deck, sitting at a table in the sun eating our lunch. There was a cold wind but if you could get out of it, it was definitely sunbathing weather. The polar vortex that has pushed down from the Arctic and forced the Presidential Inauguration inside, has also pushed cold air down here. Only today tho. When we arrive in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow it will be 25C. Had a nice lie in the sun with our books and then we went back to the cabin to pack our cases. We have to have them all outside for collection this evening by 11pm.

Tonight we had a final lovely dinner with another free 1/2 bottle of champagne and then we went to the show which was a Whitney Houston tribute. Very good singer but rather odd…. she had extremely long fake diamond nails on and waved her hands around a lot. This was fine but she had a strange dislocated thumb on both hands where the final half was at 90 degrees to the rest of her finger. What with that and the extra length of the diamond talon, it was quite mesmerizing and I watched in horrid fascination for a lot of the time.

Well…. a lovely cruise comes to an end. There could have been more sunny days to make it perfect and our health could have been better, but we’ve had a lovely time and enjoyed ourselves being at sea. Looking forward to our next adventure on Majestic Princess now and hopefully a fortnight of sun and fun around the Caribbean Islands. We’ve both started our antibiotics so hopefully our deeply chesty coughs will soon vanish….. join us again on the next segments.