Malabrigo Cruise- Ft. Lauderdale and boarding The Allure of the Seas

These posts won't be totally wordless, but truly, the pictures tell the story better than I can in most cases.

  This lovely pool was at our first Ft. Lauderdale motel. Very tropical and secluded looking...

 ...the appearance of seclusion was so convincing that one amorous couple decided to take advantage of what they thought was a private moment... though not so private that there were not others (including children) in the pool, and other adults lazing about, and one rather disgusted elderly lady who happened to spot them from her upper floor window. I suspect adult beverages were involved...

I have no idea what these trees are, but I thought the roots were fascinating.

DeeAnn recently took up knitting again, after a 40 year hiatus. She knitted this beautiful shawl for me!

There were lots of plane delays the day before the cruise. I got in okay and on time, mostly because I flew early in the day. Dee was supposed to arrive at 7:30pm. She rolled in after midnight. But she had it easy- the Cruise Organizer and a whole group of knitters from Asheville were supposed to land at FLL the morning of departure. Their flights were delayed and re-routed and they resigned themselves to missing departure and actually made arrangements to fly down to Nassau the next morning, but they stepped on board with minutes to spare. That's more excitement than anyone needs. There was bad weather (thunderstorms and wind) during the previous evening, but that didn't explain why one runway at FLL was shut down on Sail Day. We never did find out what happened.

 My friend Julie loves turtles, so I took this shot from the hotel port shuttle, which, btw, played an assortment of sailing songs on the trip (Kokomo, the themes from The Love Boat and Gilligan's Island, Sea Cruise, etc...). It was a hoot.

We passed this old wooden roller coaster several times on our Ft. Lauderdale stays, but never got an explanation for what was going on. It looked abandoned and rickety, but our friend Colleen says it is functional.

Our first glimpse of The Allure of the Seas.

You have to get way way back in order to have the whole ship in one shot (or you need to use the panorama function, which did not occur to me until  just this moment. sigh...).

Our first view on board- Level 5 Promenade. It was amazing. Simply amazing. This *street* had shops and restaurants and bars on either side, with elevators to the other levels at either end.

Ft. Lauderdale from an upper deck, before sailing. The weather that day was perfect, btw- warm sun and cool breeze. The staterooms weren't open until after 1:00pm (we boarded around 11am- in a very organized process that took about an hour but wasn't painfully horrible), so I sat up on the deck and knitted for awhile.

Our room- there was plenty of space for the two of us (not visible: a couch, the bathroom, and a multi-shelved closet). The balcony was amazing. Outside the balcony? A familiar view when in port: another cruise ship. But it wasn't as big as ours... neener neener....