We are enjoying our time in Miami and January is a wonderful month to be visiting Southern Florida. The Four Seasons Hotel is located near both business and residential areas. Everywhere we’ve gone, we observed a significant amount of construction activity of high-rise buildings that include offices, condominiums and retail space.
We have spent a good amount of time exploring the surrounding area by foot. On Sunday, we visited the Bayside Market, which includes many restaurants and stores. We walked across the bridge that connects this area with the Port of Miami including the Miami Cruise Ship Terminal. As Sunday is a busy day for the cruise lines there were several ships in port from Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Lines and Carnival Cruise Lines. We’d say there were easily eight ships or more in port including the fairly new Royal Caribbean Freedom Of The Seas Ship, which is 155K tons with a passenger capacity of over 3,600 passengers’. This is a mammoth ship and to put this in perspective if you add to it the total number of crew its entire population is similar in size to many small towns across the United States. On our way back from the terminal we walked by the American Airlines Arena which is home of the Miami Heat NBA basketball team. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is in town and we saw one of the trainers walking about five elephants from the area right outside of the arena over to an area with various tents set up. So it’s true, we don’t have to go all the way to Africa to see the elephants ☺
We have continued to take other long walks around the area and have been very impressed with the changes that have taken place since we last visited this city many years ago. In general, we found the people to be quite friendly.
During our stay we have had the opportunity to get together with some very special people. We had dinner on Sunday evening with Helene and Stanley who we first met this past year while cruising on the Seabourn Pride from Copenhagen to London. On Tuesday afternoon, we had lunch with Judith and Larry who we first met in September 2004 while sailing on the Crystal Symphony from London to New York City and who we keep in touch with through e-mails and through Cruise Critic. On Wednesday afternoon, we had lunch with Sandra and Bill who are on the full World Cruise voyage with us. We first learned that they would also be on the World Cruise through Cruise Critic and since the March timeframe we have been corresponding with each other on a regular basis via e-mail.
Many guests at our hotel are either sailing with Crystal or with Regent Cruise Lines. Evidently, Regent had three different sailings from Southern Florida this week including their World Cruise Voyage, which departed Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday.
Tomorrow we will continue to enjoy Miami and in the evening we will attend the Crystal Cruises World Cruise Gala, which is the official kickoff of the World Cruise. This will provide a wonderful opportunity to meet many of our fellow cruisers along with the many personnel from Crystal’s Corporate Office who will be in attendance..
We have been very fortunate to have wonderful weather during our time in Miami with highs each day ranging from the low 70’s to the low 80’s along with nice breezes from time-to-time.
This afternoon representatives from Crystal were at the Hotel to assist the World Cruise Passenger’s. We were given information related to tomorrow evenings World Cruise Gala and the process for transfer from the Hotel to the Crystal Serenity on Friday. We were pleased to learn that we have been assigned to the first set of cars, which will be departing the hotel for the ship on Friday morning and we should leave the hotel around 11:30 AM.
Keith and Anne Marie
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