Marty's Birthday in Ft Lauderdale

Hard to believe I'm the youngster in the group as tired as I feel and we're only on day 2 of our 10 day adventure! And we haven't really done that much. LOL! I told Marty this afternoon that I will be so glad to get on that ship, unpack my bags and be done with that for 7 nights. That's one of my very favorite parts of cruising is being able to completely unpack and stay in the same "hotel room" while visiting different places. Pure heaven!

I want to go ahead and at least get this started tonight as tomorrow morning will be a busy one. So let's talk about Marty's actual birthday day.

I mentioned in my last post that Marty went exploring after his early continental breakfast. There is a Publix about 3/4 of a mile away and we like to take some bottled water on the ship. The tap water onboard the ship is fine but it is desalinated sea water and I swear it has more sodium than your average bottled water and I have issues with retaining water and with all the rich foods on the ship I need to cut down the sodium somewhere. Or maybe we're just bottled water snobs but I do like to try to rationalize it somehow. ha! Whatever - we go through the trouble of buying and taking some on board.

Marty is ever the frugal shopper which is not a bad thing, I just want to point it out before I finish the story. Our original plan was that on his reconnaissance mission he would bring back a 12-pack and then both of us would walk over later and each carry a 12-pack. So, Marty calls me from the Publix to tell me the selection and prices. He says, "They have 12-pack Zephyr water for $3.69 but we can get a 24-pack of Publix water for $3.99." I pointed out to him that 1) I didn't think he could manage to carry a 24-pack of pint-size water bottles nearly a mile and 2) bottled water onboard the ship is $3.50 PER BOTTLE so paying a little more for the smaller package is still saving us a lot of money. LOL! He concurred and settled for the 12-pack.

By the time he got back to the hotel, Mom and Dad were ready to go down to the lobby for some breakfast. They have a pretty nice set-up and places to sit so we stayed awhile and planned our day. I had called the front desk earlier to see if the hotel shuttle could take us to Chart House for lunch and found out it was out of their range. So I asked for suggestions and was given a couple. I checked them out online and when I got downstairs I asked if she could print the menus out for us and she did. We studied the menus and Marty decided on Bimini Boatyard and it turned out to be a fine selection.

We came back up to our room so Mom could check the latest blog post and send a couple of emails while the guys did some channel surfing:

Pretty exciting birthday so far, huh? But channel surfing *IS* one of Marty's favorite activities. ;-)

We still had some time to kill before lunch so Marty and I hiked back to Publix and got some more water and a few other small items that were forgotten during the packing frenzy.

It was after 11:30 by the time we got back and we all headed down to the lobby around noon and I asked about getting a shuttle to the restaurant. It would be about 15 minutes so we hung out in the comfy lobby and waited while Marty received and replied to some of his MANY text messages wishing him a happy birthday:

He is apparently a very popular and well-liked guy! Who knew?! ;-)

Okay, now on to the good stuff. Lunch!

We actually managed to get a great group shot in front of the signage!

And you might as well come to expect plenty of food pictures on my "live" travel blog as we do like our food.

crab cake appetizer

shrimp cocktail (skewered on sugar cane!)

The "garnish" is a vertical salad in a cucumber base. Pretty *and* tasty. Dad had the clam chowder along with the crab cake appetizer for his meal. Marty also had some chowder and blackened Mahi Mahi. Mom had the fish tacos and I had the shrimp cocktail and jumbo crab cake. All the food was DEE-licious! And somehow we all decided we still had room for dessert (except for Dad - the smart one of the bunch!). Mom had tiramisu (another first for her). It was HUGE and very good. I got the creme brulee and Marty got the "Award Winning" key lime pie. I wish I had gotten it. It was SO GOOD!

Marty's scrumptious key lime pie

He also had some espresso after dessert:

drinking espresso using the proper pinkie technique

The only exception to our excellent lunch was the service which started off well but significantly slacked off by the end of the meal.

After the check was paid, I called the hotel to ask for a shuttle pick-up and was told it would be 15 to 20 minutes. We barely got out the door when the shuttle pulled up. The driver said he was close by and decided to pick us up before doing his airport run. We have had great luck with the shuttle service. It is a wonderful perk. We hope our luck holds out in the morning.

It was nearly 3:00 when we got back to the hotel when is the time they start the sign-up for the shuttles to the port for the following morning. We are the first 4 signed up for the 10:30am (earliest) shuttle. YAY!

Again, we were all pretty wiped out (and excessively over-stuffed) so we each headed for our own rooms. After a couple of hours Marty was determined we should do something else for his birthday. He was talking about walking to some of the places we passed on our way to the restaurant and I told him I could walk no further than the Outback so we went there for one last "No Worries Hours" and being Friday it was much more crowded than yesterday. We stayed for one round and we were both so tired we limped back to the hotel.

Mom had left us a message (she's getting to be a whiz with the phone system here!) so I called her to let her know we were in for the night (after all, it was 6pm local time!). The game plan is that she will call us when they wake up and get moving around. I will go to their room to get all the cruise luggage tags on their bags and we will head to the lobby around 9:30 to hopefully find a nice spot to camp out in until our shuttle. We will let Marty deal with getting all the luggage down from the rooms. Hey, his birthday is over by then! hehe.

I took a shower after I talked to Mom and seem to have gotten my second wind once I started typing. Sorry for the verbosity the last couple of posts but that will more than likely slow down. No free internet on the ship - far from it! But I promise to attempt to keep up the daily posts even if they are brief (which you will probably appreciate at this point). LOL!

I'll leave you with one last picture. Marty and I never travel without him checking out nearly every tree he passes. I've learned to deal with being married to a tree doctor by using these moments as photo ops:

Marty examines tree behind our hotel