TRAVEL DAY TO MIAMI

         I have to back up a day as yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I picked up Jane Van Harlingen and brought her to our apartment.  She spent the night as flying early Monday with us and will be doing the first 25 nights of our cruise.

        Our driver picked us up right on time at 6:30 this morning and took us to the DFW airport for our 8:35am flight to Ft Lauderdale.

        We arrived at the airport at 7am and checked a bag at the ticket counter prior to going through TSA security pre-check.  Very short lines at both so breezed right through.  Made a stop at McDonalds for a bite of breakfast then on to our gate.

        Our flight departed the gate about 15 minutes late as we had to wait for the Captain to show up.  Little did they know I could have sat in his left seat!!  But no more!!  We had nice seats in the "cabin extra" row so plenty of leg room and bloody Mary's enroute.

        We landed FLL on time and headed for baggage claim.  Yea!  Our bag made it too!!

        With our Diamond status (over 1000 nights on Regent cruises) Regent provides us with a complementary Blacklane limo transfer from, and back to, the airport.  Our driver today was Luis.

He was most helpful in handling our heavy luggage and getting us to the Hilton Miami.  I-95 was all backed up with traffic as we got close to Miami but he got us on backstreets to avoid a BIG delay.  Bravo, Luis!!

        We arrived at the Hilton at 2pm but our suite was not ready yet as the hotel was sold out yesterday.  We had to wait an hour and twenty minutes for our suite.  I was not a very happy camper!  After dropping our bags in the room we all headed to the Publix grocery store just a block away from the hotel.

        We had to get some happy hour libations and snacks.  I brought Woodford Reserve bourbon minis for my HH.  It took over 30 minutes for me to get my laptop working which is very unusual and I was worried I would be without it for the cruise.  But it is working now, thank God.

        Our long time friend from southern California, Marge Goddard, will also be staying in this hotel tonight and boarding the Navigator with us tomorrow.  As we did last time when we stayed here in December, I will be ordering a Papa John's pizza later for our dinner.  So for now I will publish this post and relax.  The girls are watching all the cruise (7 total) ships departing the dock as we have a very nice view of the Port of Miami from our suite.