Our day started early. My alarm was set to go off at 6:15 am, thinking that we were going to have to stand in line at the Excursions desk to fight for our refund. But when I checked my account early in the morning hours, the excursion had been removed so that was good. I backed the alarm off for 15 extra minutes. We were both then wide awake and decided to go ahead and get the day started.
We got our things together and headed up the Observation lounge for a light breakfast, not wanting to risk the madhouse that the buffet must be like. It was extremely quiet there so we rallied the other members of our party to come and do a final get together. Bob and Marge were going off the ship to take a transfer to the airport. Jamie and I had separate flights around 5:30 pm, with her going on a direct flight to Chicago and me going home to St. Louis via Salt Lake City. So we had some time to kill.
When they called our group to get off, we waited a bit to let the rush die down, but that probably didn’t matter a bit at all. Trying to get that number of people off a ship that big is just a logistical nightmare, plain and simple. They had us snaking all around deck 7 until we finally made it out the door and was able to find a cab.
Since we had most of the day, we decided to visit the Chihuly museum just next to the space needle. There are many Chihuly glass pieces in the St. Louis Botanical Gardens so we decided to go to the actual museum. The pieces were just beautiful. It’s hard to capture in pictures. Yes, you can see that they are colorful and intricate, but they are also MASSIVE. Not sure how to put that in perspective. And I’m not sure how long it took to blow all of of the thousands of pieces and put them together.
After touring the gardens, we sat down for a glass blowing demonstration. I had never actually seen that before, except on TV. Marge and Bob had brought us a small glass vase from Italy when they were there years ago that sits on our mantle. To actually see them creating one from a blob of glass was impressive.
We ended up eating in the museum restaurant, which was surprisingly good. After lunch, we were able to get a Lyft to the airport and had a couple of hours to wait. My flight to Salt Lake City was fine, but I started to notice the scratch in my throat getting a little worse and my nose starting to drip. I thought that must be the result of being in the cold Victoria wind for several hours.
Anyway, when I arrived in Salt Lake City, the next flight said it was already boarding. I had to trek from A15 down to A3. But when I reached A3, the flight was NOT boarding. In fact, they came on and said that our plane was being grounded for a maintenance issue. Luckily, they had a plane we could use, but we would have to trek over to B4. So everyone made the long walk to the B gates. The flight ended up being delayed for quite a bit and I finally got home around 2:30am on Monday. And by this time I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. This was not fun since my throat was still hurting and my nose was dripping like a faucet.
As it turns out, when checking in with Marge, she wasn’t feeling well and had thought she had a sinus infection so was in bed. But she ended up taking a covid test and it was positive. I thought I just had a slight cold, but went ahead and took a test and what do you know? I also have Covid. So I’ve spent the evening upstairs quarantining and will be up here for the next 5 days. Fun, fun. Thankfully, everyone else is feeling fine. I was worried particularly about Jamie since we roomed together and since she works with infants and toddlers. But she took off Monday and Tuesday from work and so far is feeling fine.
So it’s a sad end to what was mostly a wonderful trip. I’d like to spend time with Gregg, but he’s downstairs and only comes up when he has to, donning his hazmat suit. Hopefully Friday will come soon.
Join us again in December when we go to spend a few days in New Orleans, then have a 5 night Caribbean cruise. That will be our final 2023 vacation.
