Yesterday, we boarded Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We’re on board for a 14 day Atlantic Crossing with a destination of Southampton, England. From there we’ll stay on board for another 14 days as we tour the Mediterranean with stops in Barcelona, Gibraltar, Rome, and a few others. We’ll post more on that later.For now, we thought it might be fun to post a few images of the ship. We’re docked in Nassau, Bahamas at the moment. Well, to be truthful, we just left the Bahamas about fifteen minutes ago. In the gallery below, you’ll first see a few pictures of Fort Lauderdale. Then you’ll see the ship with a few images of Nassau mixed in. All of these images were shot with our phones.
Here’s an interesting note, for all of you out there that think a ship will wait for you when you’re late getting back to the ship. Our “all aboard time” was 3:00 pm today. At 3:00 pm, the ship’s horn blasted to let all of Nassau know what time it was. All gangplanks were raised except for one. We saw a few stragglers making their way back to the ship late, but at about 3:15 pm we saw something very interesting. One of the ship’s security officers walked off the ship and handed what appeared to be two passports, some money, and two electronic tablets to a person who looked like the Royal Caribbean Representative. We’ve heard that if you miss the boat, the ship security will go to your cabin and remove the contents of your safe and leave it behind at the port. This is what appeared to be happening.
A few minutes later, a golf cart carrying a lady and her very young child approached the remaining gangplank. They got off, collected their passports and so on from the agent, and boarded the ship. At the same instant, the ropes were being taken in and we were underway within two minutes of these people making it back. They very nearly were left behind.
We watched this drama unfold from the comfort of our balcony through a pair of good binoculars, but it underscored to us that you need to make sure you’re back on time.
Now, if you please, enjoy some of the images of the Independence of the Seas in this gallery below.
[…] One of the great advantages of traveling on a cruise ship is that you can see many places in a very short time. The ship usually stops at a new port pretty much every day, and you can jump off, take a guided tour, or do your own thing. On this trip, we were aboard the Royal Caribbean Independence of the Seas. Great ship, by the way. We posted about it here. […]