It's always sad leaving a cruise, even when you've got another one coming up :-)
Again, the organisation around getting everyone of the ship was seriously impressive. We had breakfast and then lazed around in our cabin for a while. There was an interactive display on the TV letting us know which 'number groups' had been called for departure, so we could see when it was getting close to time for us to go. Around 9am we went to the designated departure area - because we have sailed with Royal Caribbean before we had a special area set aside but really it was hardly necessary, the 'normal' waiting areas were quite ok as well.
After we left the ship, there was a long queue waiting to go through CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) but that's obviously all about the number of CBP staff that are available, not something Royal Caribbean can control. And, in any case, even though the queue was long, it moved quickly and we were out and looking for our ride back to the hotel in no time.
We had pre-booked our return trip to the hotel with the shuttle company back at the start of the cruise. Of course you can't predict when you'll be ready to be picked up, but they said that they aim to have a shuttle waiting as soon as you get off the ship, and it certainly worked for us - there was one right there and we were back at the hotel by about 10am.
Of course, the minor problem was that this is about 5 hours too early to check in.
However, we had a plan which was to get a taxi to Sawgrass Mills - a huge shopping centre about 17 miles away. A couple of reasons for picking this one - it's often recommended as the best of its type in the area mostly because of the large number of outlet stores, and it also has a USPS office (post office) that's open all day (most USPS offices only open for a couple of hours on Saturday).
The reason we wanted USPS was because we hoped we would need to send back our postal votes for the ACT elections. The voting papers weren't available until long after we left Australia, so we had asked Elections ACT to send the postal voting papers here, and amazingly they were actually waiting for us today. However, in order to be counted they have to be posted by 20 October and they have to arrive back in Oz before 26 October, so today was really our only chance to get them sent.
We ended up going to Sawgrass Mills by shuttle rather than taxi - they quoted a set price of $40 each way which is about $10 less than the taxi fare is likely to be.
We found the USPS office and posted off the voting papers, so that's all good.
We also picked up a few bits and pieces that we needed, but mostly we just looked around the shops. I've never seen so many shops in one place :-)
I also had a classic example of American 'over-catering' for lunch - a "small" Tuna Salad from a shop in the Food Court. It consisted of a paper plate the size of a regular dinner plate completely covered at least 2 inches deep with shredded lettuce, then some carrot and tomato, then probably a cupfull of tuna, then some olives and dressing. It took me about 25 minutes to eat it, and I can't imagine how big the 'large' salad would have been! It was really nice. And the price was amazingly low to someone who's accustomed to Canberra prices - the salad and a medium pineapple-mint smoothie (the size of an old-fashioned milk-shake, and also absolutely delicious) - was $US9.16. That's about $8.95 on today's exchange rate - and I'd bet that if it was possible to get such a thing in Canberra the price would be more like $12 to $15.
We got back to the hotel just after 3pm, and our room was ready. We got a bit of an upgrade - they've put us into one of their 'handicapped' rooms so there's heaps of space including a completely separate bedroom. Nice...
We spent most of the afternoon on housekeeping stuff - mostly washing clothes - then watched a bit of TV and crashed.
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