We both sleep in and go to breakfast about 9:00AM. After breakfast, we walk the three blocks to the CVS and buy the tape and other materials we need to finish packing for the move to the ship and for packing to go home. Carolyn also finds a little florist and buys a dozen red roses for our stateroom on the ship
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About 11:30AM we call for our car and a porter. The plan is to drop the luggage at the cruise terminal getting the porters to take it on the ship, go to the airport and return the car and taxi back to the cruise terminal and board. We drive to the cruise terminal only to find that disembarkation is going very slowly and they will not let us offload our luggage to a porter.
The guard tells us it will be an hour or more for a porter, but we are welcome to take the seven pieces of luggage ourselves and go through security! No Thanks!! So, we drive on over to Hertz at the airport to dump the car. Much to our surprise, Hertz is running a cruise terminal shuttle so we load our five pieces of luggage and two large Fanning Island boxes in and take off for another try. They will not let the Hertz bus in to drop us off either, yet...they tell her about 15 minutes so the driver suggests that we stay on for another circuit of hers route, which we do. There was some kind of a security breach when the Rotterdam entered the port and the disembarkation didn’t start until nearly eleven which explains the twenty plus taxis lined up at the ship when we first arrived.
Upon returning to the pier the third time, we still cannot enter to drop off luggage but we decide to get out anyway, but at least all the taxis have cleared out. A security guard tells Dick that we still will have to hustle our stuff through the gate ourselves! Fortunately, a pedicab driver tells us we can load our stuff on his bike and he will take us in as soon as the gate opens. That sounds like a plan to us and just as soon as we are loaded, they open the gate and he delivers us to where we can give our luggage to the terminal porters.
From there on, it is a fairly easy process of moving through the "Suites" check-in line, getting our boarding cards and heading for our room, #7033. After depositing our carry-on bags in the room, we go to the Neptune Lounge for a snack lunch as we have missed the Mariners lunch in the main dinning room. This lounge is a perk for the cabins in our class. Our concierge, Karen, a tiny Oriental lady, introduces herself. All but one of the bags, the one with the dive gear, have showed up so we unpack and get our cloths put away.
Karen calls the room about 4:30 and tells us the missing bag is in the main office, they need to look inside!
The ship sails at 5:00PM while Dick is down in Security retrieving a bag that has been held. Upon opening the bag, the officer can find no reason it was flagged and Dick returns with it to the cabin. We go on deck in time to get good photos of the three aircraft carriers and other points of interest as we exit the harbor.
We talk to our son-in-law, Ben, just before 5:00PM and learn that his Grandfather, Dr. Bradley, has just passed away. Returning to the room, we finish unpacking and relax with some salmon appetizers form the Neptune Lounge and a couple of cocktails before going to dinner. We have second seating with a table for two. We both have soup, Caesar salad and steak. Dicks has a toffee desert and Carolyn has some cherry ice cream. The meal is good and the severs are good, but we do not like the location of the table...off in a corner behind a serving station. Carolyn will work on that tomorrow. For now we are happy campers and the ship is gently rocking. We are off to bed and asleep in minutes! The first of 31 days down!
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