Welcome home from the honeymoon. American lost one of our bags last night. And although it was promised to be on the 11am flight from Miami this morning, I’ve yet to receive any update on its status. Central Baggage Services did call this morning to update my claim file. The nice lady on the phone collected some more detailed info about the contents of the bag, but did not have any additional information on the whereabouts of the bag. The phone call actually caught me by surprise. Haven’t had that happen before, but fortunately, haven’t had that many bags lost either.

A lousy end to a fabulous cruise vacation!

Updated to add: I went to the airport this afternoon. My missing bag had just been loaded on the courier’s cart for delivery. I intercepted it, and brought it home. All’s well that ends well.

Half-way through our honeymoon cruise, that is.  I have to admit that I thought 12 days on a ship might get a little tedious by the one-week point, but I could not have been more wrong.  I can only speculate that the fact that I haven’t had any real time off in over a year combined with just getting though our wedding are big reasons why this cruise is so great.  Other reasons are that the Grandeur of the Seas, while small by today’s floating amusement park standards, is a really great ship.  The crew is fantastic, and the service better than any other Royal Caribbean ship I’ve cruised on, especially in the dining room.  The 11-night repositioning itinerary has also attracted a group of cruisers that I would speculate is older than the average Royal Caribbean crowd.  There are very few children, given the length of itinerary and the timing of the cruise.  Not that I want to spend time with a bunch of geriatrics, but our fellow cruisers are an experienced group of travelers and have really added to the atmosphere on board.  Grandeur even hosted a honeymooner’s get-together for the eight or so honeymooning couples on board, all but one of which were pretty close to our age.  But the one “older” couple were quite fun.

I’m up early this Wednesday morning after the election.  The ship switched it’s clocks last night instead of over the weekend.  Not sure why, but I’d guess it had something to do with our itinerary and location on the map.  In any event, I woke up wired and ready to go at 6:00 a.m.  I walked a mile on deck, and then hit the coffee shop for a skim latte and a visit with my laptop.  We’re at sea today as we make our way towards Cartagena, Columbia where we’ll take a walking tour of the city which we booked through Royal Caribbean.  All the articles I’ve read really talk up Cartagena, but I’m not quite ready to venture out on my own in Colombia.  Maybe next time.

I know my postings this week have been fairly meaningless ramblings, but hey…I’m on vacation.  I promise to get back to more meaningful travel writing after the honeymoon, including a complete review of the cruise.  We arrive Tampa on November 10, and then it’s back to reality.  Thanks for reading.

Captain Jim has found some sunshine and I am now camped out by the pool on the beautiful Grandeur of the Seas. Better yet, I am posting this via my AT&T BlackBerry using the ship’s cell antenna. It’s a better deal than using Royal Caribbean’s internet service. Lady Astrojets is in the spa and I am enjoying an ice cold beer! Well, I guess I will get back to my honeymoon vacation!

Marshall Jackson

I was shamefully unprepared for my wireless internet connection to work onboard Grandeur of the Seas. So I will have to make this quick. I’m posting from Grandeur somewhere between Charleston, SC and Samana, D.R. We’re on our second sea day after departing Charleston Saturday evening. This has been a fantastic cruise so far. Our departure from Baltimore on Thursday was delayed by 2 hours as Grandeur encountered rough weather inbound from Bermuda and had to slow down to make things more tolerable. Royal Caribbean contacted our travel agent, who then contacted us. We followed instructions and did not arrive at the Port of Baltimore until 2pm. The port was crowded, but we were checked in and onboard in less than one hour after our arrival. I’m not certain if our Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor Diamond Status or our cabin class bought us expedited boarding or not. But we were called for boarding shortly after check-in, and there was quite a throng of people that had arrived before us.

In any event, I’ll post a full review at completion of the trip, but suffice it to say that so far this has been a fantastic honeymoon cruise!