12/28/13 - Best Western Plus Fort Lauderdale Airport South Inn & Suites & Carnival Freedom

On the 27th we went to Ron Jon Surf Shop before we left for Ft. Lauderdale.  We had fun looking around and trying funny hats on.











I used priceline.com for our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale and we got the Best Western Plus Fort Lauderdale Airport South Inn and Suites.  They have a very nice breakfast area but it does not open until 7:00 am it does not work to well.  We had heard talk that it would get packed early so we went down early and sure enough at 7 people started pouring in.  When we were checking out around 9:30 it was totally packed.





They were smart though and spread items around the area so if you wanted cereal you did not have to deal with the people who were making waffles or the other hot breakfast items.

We filled up the car and returned it to the rental car company and they shuttled us to the port.  Going through security they wanted to take one of my bottles of wine because I had 3 bottles with me but because Amanda and I were doing a back to back cruise they let me keep all of the bottles.

Amanda was FB messaging someone that was on the ship and found out that the reason it was taking so long for us to be able to board is that they were having a problem getting everyone off the ship and through customs.

One of the benefits of being platinum with Carnival is that we can go straight to our cabin which is what we did so we could unload our heavy packs.











Then of course I had to decorate our entry way.

 With that all done we headed back up on deck.













At 3:00 we had a Meet and Greet with fellow cruisers that we had talked to on cruisecritic.com for months before our actual cruise.

I was really bad about taking pictures of the ship this time but I did get one of the gingerbread village.