Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I flew from San Antonio to DFW, waited awhile in the American Airlines Admirals’ Club in Terminal D (the international terminal), noting how poor these clubs are to what Qantas offers even in their Domestic lounges. The next flight was from DFW to Miami, arriving at 9:30pm. Baggage took an age to come out (and I found out later that TSA had left me yet another ‘love note’ – my third on this trip. Wasn’t that nice of them? They left me one in each bag on the flight from DFW to San Antonio too.) Sue had organised a driver and town car to meet me at baggage claim, so once I had my bags getting to the hotel was a breeze.

Next morning, we had the buffet breakfast in the café at the hotel, and then were taken by another town car and driver to the Port of Miami to join our cruise ship, the Oceania Riviera.

There were already lots of people at check in and it’s a fairly long process to hand over passports, pick up stateroom key cards, etc. The mix of ages in the check in lines ranged from elderly (some on walkers and in wheelchairs) to young (the youngest we’ve seen on board is about 3 years old, with only a few children [this ship doesn’t have ANY activities for children], ranging in age from about 7 to about 15). I would think the average age of the guests was over 60, but not much higher as there were quite a number who appeared to be in their 40s to 50s.

Once we’d finished checking in, we went on board. We couldn’t get into our stateroom for an hour or so, so we wandered the ship, trying to orient ourselves and check out where the various restaurants and other facilities were.