Those who have followed other of my travel BLOGS know that “Day 0” is house cleaning / final packing / cleaning out the fridge day. Not so this trip. All that happened on Day -5, before we left for Oklahoma and early family Christmas. Today was a bit different as far as “Day 0” goes.
We were picked up by an airport shuttle this morning and presented ourselves at OKC, entering the warm embrace of Viking Air.
OKC (the Will Rogers Oklahoma City airport) is a reasonably quiet small airport, a nice restful way to start our last adventure (before the real adventure starts).
There’s some fairly serious weather along the east coast so yesterday we took the precaution of reserving a rental car, should it become advisable to drive from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale.
Fortunately, when we arrived at ATL, one look at the schedule board convinced us that things were operating just fine, thank you very much, so we cancelled the car and grabbed a snack before boarding.
One of the advantages of using Viking Air for this trip is that they placed us in Business Class. So we were bot surprised to find 3 other ‘world cruise’ couples on our flight. We chatted a bit, trading war stories about travel in December and reports from people currently on our ship as it crosses the Atlantic from its ‘birthplace’ in Italy.
Arriving in Ft. Lauderdale we hopped a cab to the Embassy Suites, dumped our stuff in our room…
$400 later (remember, we’re buying 5 months worth of personal health and hygiene stuff) we had crossed off most of our shopping list. Tomorrow morning we head on over the the local CVS where we will (it is to be hoped) pick up the rest. If not, at least we have enough to get us to Los Angeles where we should have time and opportunity to finish stocking up.
Returning to the hotel with two large shopping bags full of ‘stuff’ we have settled in for the night to read and BLOG and get ready for the final push to the ship.
We board tomorrow at 2:00. This phase will be over and we will finally arrive at Day 1 of the actual trip.
Till then… R
Bon voyage! Your fantastic adventure has begun! Keep well and enjoy!!!
I am really looking forward to following your journey. We go in a year and I am very interested in hearing about how you like/or don’t like an excursion. Safe travels.
Bon Voyage! We have to wait one more year. Excited to read about your adventure.