Travel Day Finally Arrives

 

Allure of the Seas
Cozumel, Mexico
August 29, 2018

Trips require a lot of planning and when travel day finally arrives it is momentous. 

Travel day is here. We are departing on a cruise later today headed for Caribbean enjoyment with some family members to celebrate a special occasion. This particular trip has generated a lot of planning and since it is a cruise it seems to me that there has been a lot of packing, repacking, and coordination. 

Allure of the Seas
Port Everglades, FL
July 25, 2026
Image by Jeremy Doan

But travel day is here and we expect to head to the port early this morning. We are luckier than the family members we are traveling with--they had to fly to the port, which they did yesterday. We are driving and it is only just over an hour away.

I am always awake early on travel days. It is just something I do. This middle of the night sleeplessness has saved more than one vacation. A few years ago, we were traveling to St Maarten and I woke up about 2 AM. Just for grins, I checked our flight from Baltimore and found that it had been canceled. Ugh! I scrambled for about an hour and got rebooked out of Dulles on a very early morning flight which meant that we needed to leave almost immediately. We made the flight and the vacation was saved.

Hopefully today will not be so nearly nerve-racking. 

We are sailing on a ship we have sailed before, Allure of the Seas, and that will be exciting. Chris likes the big ships and this is the one we sailed on for her retirement trip. I will not be able to relax until we are on the ship, there are so many things that need to be accomplished between now and embarkation. 

But, hopefully it will be a sweet Bon Voyage!

-- Bob Doan, Tequesta, FL