Today we board the Island Princess for our Panama Canal cruise. We have breakfast at the hotel and prepare for our transfer to the ship. We meet with Robyn and Bruce on the bus to the port. Check in is easy but the most exciting part is that when we receive our cruise cards they are Platinum which means we have gone up a level with our cruise loyalty program and this means we get 250 minutes of free internet each! On board our cabin is on deck 10 port side. The r...

Open the curtains this morning to see the sunrise over Fort Lauderdale. We have to wait til 10.30am to disembark but we need to be out of our room by 8 so it's just shower and go to breakfast. It's a beautiful day, sunny with a nice breeze. We will get a transfer to our hotel (which we can see from the ship) this morning and then decide what we do from there. There is a water taxi that's a Hop on Hop off trip up and down the waterways so that's one option or a tr...

Our night at the Hilton was uneventful. I slept very well but Glenn was not so settled. This morning before breakfast we have our bags ready to be collected by cruise staff. After breakfast we go for a walk to explore the local area. Directly across from the hotel is the cruise port and we can clearly see the Royal a Princess waiting for us. It's not a very exciting walk as most of the shops are not open until later and we were not interested in coffee just yet. ...

Adelaide to Fort Lauderdale via Sydney and Dallas We left Adelaide on time thinking we only had an hour to change terminals to connect to the international flight but as luck would have it, the flight was delayed an hour which gave us a bit of breathing space. The flight over QF7 was on a 380 and I had secured us the 2 very back seats on the upper deck. We had enough room to recline our seats and received excellent service from the stewards. Glenn even had a lugg...