The Central American Caper, Part 1

Sitting on the tarmac in St. Paul.

    How to look like a complete flake: Restart your blog after years of silence, write two posts, and then disappear for five weeks. I had a reason for the "radio silence": I was in Central America!

   Way back in 2016, at the end of our European Adventure, we booked a 3-week "repositioning" cruise on one of Holland America's ships. Repositioning cruises--scheduled when a cruise line has to move a ship from its winter cruising area (the Carribbean) to its summer cruising area (Alaska) in April, or reverse direction in October. The cruises are a bit more laid back than a normal cruise, and are usually less expensive. We originally booked passage on the Eurodam, from Ft. Lauderdale to San Francisco, for April 2018, but a family emergency resulted in rebooking for April 2020. Needless to say, that cruise was canceled.

   Last June, I had the opportunity to rebook nearly the same trip for April 2023 and I jumped at it. Same ship (the Eurodam) but no San Francisco this time: instead, I had my choice of San Diego or Seattle. I chose Seattle, and we left on April 4 for Ft. Lauderdale, for a few days of relaxing in a sunny, warm clime. "Sunny" and "warm" were important words: by early April, we had had five months of wet and cold, and I was ready to thaw out. We didn't stay anywhere fancy while in Ft. Lauderdale--the Residence Inn in Miramar, a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale was our "base of operations" while making sure we had everything we needed for the cruise, swimming in the hotel pool, and generally goofing off. It was warm, it was sunny, and I really didn't do anything except laze around and read trashy romance novels. It was heaven!