Friday, December 23, 2016

Travel Home - Wednesday, December 21, 2016 (Celebrity Eclipse Cruise)

A little before 5:00 a.m., the boat seemed to slow and so I ventured out onto our balcony and watched us coast the last 40 minutes and dock in Miami.  Here is a photo of the city:
Here are a few stats on our trip.
Ship:  Celebrity Eclipse (Solstice Class)
Departed:  December 11, 2016
Returned to Miami:  December 21, 2016
Occupancy:  2,850
Crew:  1,271
Tonnage:  122,000
Length:  1,041 ft
Beam: 121 ft
Draught:  27 ft
Cruise Speed:  24 knots (we seemed to typically travel around 19-20 knots)
Inaugural Date:  April 29, 2010

Ports Visited                            Distance (Nautical Miles)
Crown Bay, St. Thomas            986
Basseterre, St. Kitts & Nevis    147
Bridgetown, Barbados              315
Philipsburg, St. Maarten           371
Miami, Florida                           1,082
Cruise Total                             2,901

The Eclipse was equipped with two 33,000 hp propellers, 18 feet in diameter each and six side thrusters (three on each side) 15,000 hp each.  The engines are electric powered and the ship's generators run on diesel.  





This was a very long day.  We had to be out of the rooms by 7:00 a.m. so headed to the Moonlight Sonata Dining Room for breakfast.  Afterwards we hung out in Qsine to wait with the to other concierge class people for our number to be called.  We were scheduled to get off around 9:35 a.m. but they were ahead of schedule and were walking off the ship by about 9:20 a.m.  We hired Howard’s Ground Transportation to take us to the Fort Lauderdale Airport where we waited until our 4:45 p.m. flight.  

The airport was a bit busy and so the plane that was picking us up had to spend 40 minutes on the tarmac waiting for our gate to be open before they could unload and then we could board.  I think we were almost 30 minutes late leaving and thus got in a bit late.  

We came home to quite a bit of snow.  There were two-day snowstorms both weekends we were gone, each dumping I would guess 6-8 inches of snow.  We had also just missed the extreme cold with highs around 0*F.  Temperatures were in the mid 30s when we flew in.

My husband's uncle picked us up at the airport and after grabbing some take-out food for supper, we were home about 8:30 p.m., which felt like 10:30 p.m.

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