Celebrity Caribbean Cruise – Part One: En Route

As usual, with pleasure comes a bit of pain. Well, that’s what I hear anyway. In this case, to get to a cruise one must suck it up for the airport/airline experience. We were booked to Ft. Lauderdale on Southwest, mostly because of lower airfare and free bags, of which we had three. But there is the cattle call aspect of the whole thing.

If you haven’t flown Southwest, know that there are no reserved seats, just boarding priority groups. You must line up next to numbered posts corresponding to your boarding priority group, i.e., A, B, C, etc. The higher your letter and accompanying number, the farther back in the aircraft you’ll sit and the less likely you’ll sit together if you’re traveling with someone. Of course, Southwest will sell you an expedited registration status for an extra ten bucks. Fries with that, sir?

Then there’s security at the airport, always a treat. I can’t talk about that without raising my blood pressure. In fairness, however, the first TSA employee we encountered on this trip actually seemed to possess a sense of humor. The rest of them didn’t…

Luckily, it was only a two hour flight to Ft. Lauderdale from Raleigh, so it could have been worse, I suppose. As it was, we did get a middle and aisle seat together. That’s the good news. The bad news is the woman occupying the window seat was obviously battling some respiratory impairment which involved hearty and productive nose blowing about every ten minutes, accompanied by juicy coughing in between blows. Thinking of all the germs she must have been spewing into the air, we tried not to inhale. But unlike Bill Clinton, we weren’t successful.

Here’s a point I’ve visited before in dealing with commercial flying: does the passenger sitting next to the window own it? All three people in the row can see out the window and might want to retain that privilege. But the window seat occupier can unilaterally close the shade with no vote or discussion and the other two are thus denied the view. Personally, I think it should be up to a three-way vote. And I want two votes…

As always, during every flight someone near me just has to fart. It happened this time about halfway through the trip and, from the aroma that lingered, I’d say whoever did it had recently been dining on brussels sprouts and worms.

The rest of the flight went smoothly. We retrieved our luggage, grabbed a cab at the airport and motored to the dock. I had asked the driver as we left whether he took credit cards, and he said he did. But, oddly enough, once we got to the pier the machine didn’t seem to be working (wink wink). Call me suspicious for thinking that he didn’t want a record of his fare and tip so cash could be hidden from the tax man. Nah, that couldn’t be it…

We boarded the ship and headed up for what would be, I’m sure, our first of many buffet experiences. <burp> Stay tuned for more…

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