Category Archives: Fort Lauderdale

2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world!


ABOVE: Surfers!

They probably wait out there every day for a cruise ship to come by and give them waves.

Goodbye, Fort Lauderdale – goodbye!


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

More movin’ out

ABOVE: Pinkish sunset clouds on the horizon

BELOW: People on the rock jetty started waving at the ship; I waved back!


ABOVE: Our ship starts generating waves toward the shore….


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Waterfront properties

ABOVE: Hotels and/or condos facing the port

BELOW: Waterfront homes; the one on the extreme right is under construction.

ABOVE: Stay tuned, something interesting is about to happen on that little beach…


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Abandon ship!

No, not really. This was the safety drill. Unfortunately, our meeting place was on the side of the ship with the broiling hot setting sun. It seemed like we were trapped there in our sticky life jackets for freakin’ EVAH! I like how you can see my arm reflected in the sunglasses (I took this pic myself).


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Can you take some more reception?


ABOVE: When you walk off the Viking Crown deck to find a place to smoke, you find yourself overlooking the basketball court and the miniature golf course.

BELOW: The front of the Viking Crown lounge overlooks the pool

Dee and Ellen, with Cathy


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Yet more reception


ABOVE: That’s about one quarter of Glo, followed by Kimball and Carol

BELOW: Michelle, Sandi, Cathy’s back, and a little bit of Susan’s face

ABOVE: Carol, Kelly, Wendy and Mary


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

More reception


The Mango Lava Flow was exceedingly sweet – too sweet even for me. But it sure did look pretty in the glass!

Someone is always trying to make out with Deb on these Moose trips….

Glo stands ready to digitally capture any misbehavior for posterity.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

All-Aboard Reception at the Viking Crown Lounge

Cathy and Michelle of Starfish Travel arranged a “Meet Your Fellow Cruisers” cocktail reception for us. Many of us had already met at least once at the 2007 Lodgeboards Moose Meet in October, but an equal amount had never met. What a fun bunch of ladies!


Here’s Tricia + the mystery passenger, and KellyB


ABOVE: Wendy (aka, The Wendyrazzi), Mary, Lesia, and Cindy with her daughter.
BELOW: Cathy, Susan, and Sharon standing, with Linda sitting (Deb’s aunt).


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Final stateroom shots

The tile on the shower floor (I don’t think I’ve ever been in a round shower before). Also, you can see me sitting on the sofa, taking a pic of the vanity/desk area.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

The Stateroom

The beds were pretty comfortable. If there had been a third person in the room, the sofa would have been opened flat each night by the stateroom attendant, and closed up the next morning when the room was made up. The main bed separates into two twins, which we had done while we were at dinner. There was a veranda for smoking and just sitting out with coffee each morning (had that delivered to the stateroom). Bath and shower cozy but not really a problem for me until it came to shaving my legs – there’s no room to do it in the shower bending over (oof, not good for the back, anyway), and there’s nothing to prop your foot upon. All in all, pretty comfy.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida, Southwest Florida

Just trawlin’ the decks

Just traversing the ship, checkin’ out the sights. I didn’t really anticipate doing Johnny Rockets here, as I have a Johnny Rockets right in Fort Myers that I can go to any time I wish. I think it was at this point that they called out for us to report to our cabins.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Monday 12-03-2007: More of the Solarium

Here we see more photos of the Solarium. There were some interesting statues up above the doorway back to the interior of the ship. I also love the Venus statue.



2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Monday 12-03-2007: Solarium

OK here’s where we pick up from when Blogger started rejecting the photos last Monday.

Behind the main pool area is the Solarium, which has a couple of hot tubs, a bar, and a “quiet pool”. This area is pretty much adults only, and the deck chairs are cloth-covered in this section. Loved the statue; will find pics from the other camera and post them, too.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

*snif* The Lodge Ladies Cruise has come to an end!

Horrible internet access on the ship. Each page would take several minutes to load. Other multiple problems + the cost of paying by the minute for slow load was the reason that this blog didn’t get done at all, never mind in real time, during the cruise.

We all had the best time!

Here’s my game plan. I will first go through and comment on the pics that already got loaded (it worked until about 1PM on set sail day, Dec 3rd). Then, I will start captioning the rest of the photos I took, and I’ll start sending them to the blog from Picasa. Be patient, I have 5 days worth of photos to get through.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

There was a pparently an outtage of some sort

1 Comment

Started getting error messages while taking pics of the ship. Something about exceeding the number of posts without doing a captcha. A WHAT? Called Bro. No. 2 and gave him my credentials to log in and poke around. He found some discussion on a newsgroup indicating that there was a problem with picture posts today. Anyhow, the WI-FI on the ship is slow and expensive, so I’m going to have to develop a strategy for doing most of the work offline – maybe put them into Picasa on my laptop, with captions, and then hitting the blog button? I dunno. Just wanted to let y’all know I’m not slacking!


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

uh, yep, it’s a bar

Drink Of The Day can happen here! You get them in a glass shaped like a wine glass, which you get to keep. There were, I believe, four colors – blue, amber, green, and red. I did not collect them; would be just more stuff to squeeze into my luggage.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Down the center

Several decks of inside cabins have windows that look down upon the Royal Processional down the center of the ship. There were some parades down this area, on Deck 5, throughout the course of the cruise.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Navigator of the Seas, Port Everglades, Royal Caribbean, Southeast Florida

Coming up the gang plank

Was not allowed to take pics between the first security check in and the ship. Here’s one of the lifeboats taken from the gang plank (which is sort a like a skyway between customs and the ship).


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Southeast Florida

Party at the Ramada

After dinner, Mary and I headed out to a different hotel, where a lot of the Lodge Ladies are hanging their hats for the evening. We found them and THIS CARNAGE out by the tiki bar. Sat around swapping family war stories for a few hours.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Southeast Florida

Trivia questions

2 Comments

Hi vb

The waiter was asking us trivia questions about Forrest Gump. The last question he asked was “Mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by ….”. I thought it might be shoes, but I wasn’t sure. Racking our brains, I finally said to Mary, “you know what, call VB, he probably knows”. So here’s me while Mary is on the phone with VB.

PS – I was right, the answer was “by their shoes”.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Beach, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Sheraton, Southeast Florida

Pool from our hotel window

Many of the hotels are set up with a small, three story or so section out front, on top of which is the pool and a walkway across the highway to get to the beach. The hotel tower is behind this section.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Beach, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Southeast Florida

Slim pickin’s on the Ft Lauderdale beach

Not a lot in the way of shells. Tide seemed to be coming in, and I didn’t feel like getting soaking wet. Also, I forgot to put my shell-net-on-a-stick in the back of the car before we left, so I was at a real disadvantage. Water surprisingly warm!


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Sheraton, Southeast Florida

Skyways

There are skyways all over the place between sections of hotels, and between hotels and the beach. You have to cross A1A to get to the beach, so it’s better to have a skyway and then an elevator down to street level than it is to have tourists holding up traffic and possibly going splat in the road.


2007 Lodge Ladies Cruise, Florida, Fort Lauderdale, On The Road, Southeast Florida

Highway signage

We’re getting close to Fort Lauderdale here. Deb saw this pic on the blog and thought I was trying to tell her something about highway closures – LOL! I just thought it was a cool piece of signage, with the sun rays on top and all.