Home again, home again

Monday, January 20, 2014

All good things must come to an end and today was no exception.  Since we had a late 6:00 pm flight home from Ft. Lauderdale, we chose an excursion to fill the many hours following our 8:00 am departure from the ship.

We really grew to love Pacific Princess, her crew and our fellow cruisers, but we were eager to return to our California home.  The morning weather was perfect as we disembarked the ship in Port Everglades.  Customs was a breeze and we were soon on the bus to our first stop, Everglades Holiday Park, a location where we would ride an airboat and view an alligator show.

Haven driven past scores of “reptile gardens” across the Sunshine State, we carried with us a high degree of skepticism about this tourist attraction.  Surprisingly, we were actually educated and entertained by the extra effort that EHP has taken to make this a quality attraction.  The airboat ride was more than a high speed thrill ride across the River of Grass, but was actually quite informative. 

Following the airboat trip, we were entertained and educated by an alligator show where a volunteer, who stood less than five feet tall, handled 300 pound gators.

Our excursion also visited Flamingo Gardens, a privately owned plant and animal reserve.  True to its name, the flamingos were beautiful.

We arrived at the airport by 1:30 and passed some of the time before our flight catching up on our email.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  Several decades ago, United Airlines, home of the Friendly Skies, was our premier carrier, proudly representing the United States in red, white and blue around the world.  The United 737 which we boarded in Ft. Lauderdale was a state-of-art aircraft, but the story ends there.  Not only was our 6 ½ hour flight uncomfortable, but it appears as if the airline had done everything possible to scrape every dime from the passenger, but providing only minimal service.  Not even a blanket or pillow could be spied.

Our seat had one broken armrest, an inconvenience that made it impossible to use the video screen in front of this.  On top of that, everything on the video screen incurred an extra charge.  Not one package of peanuts was provided.  Meals and snacks were sold, providing they hadn’t sold out by the time the cart had reached our rear rows of the coach class section. Compared to the Delta flights that we had taken on our eastbound trip, United’s service was quite substandard.

We finally reached San Francisco International Airport and sprinted our way to the other end of the airport to catch our connector to Palm Springs.  We could have taken our time, as the United Express pilots had not yet arrived.

Our commuter flight arrived in Palm Springs only a few minutes late and our friend and house-sitter, Gary picked us up and brought us back to our home at the Sands at 1:00 am.  We had been up for 22 hours, ready to crash in our own bed, the final chapter in a fantastic trip.