"We Can Drive It Hoo-ome... With One Pro-pell-or" - Western Caribbeean Cruise Day 7 (and 8?)

It was our last day of the cruise and another "fun day at sea" for us coming back from Roatan to Tampa. It gave us time to relax and look back and laugh at the wonderful and wacky trip it had been such as the station wagon we ate warm fruit out of in Belize (and didn't get sick) as well as the dumbest chicken in the world in George Town, Grand Cayman (photos above).

The four of us dressed up for dinner one last night (photos below) after spending the afternoon emptying a litre of duty-free vodka we had sneaked aboard in a water bottle in Roatan....shhh, that's an old Mexican trick we learned a few years ago on another cruise.

We got the news late that afternoon.

Well, the daily onboard newsletter proclaimed it "An extra half day at sea!" but what it really boiled down to was a mechanical glitch that caused one of the ship's two huge propellers to stop turning sometime on the way back to Tampa dropping our speed in half and thus delaying our return by eight hours. This, in turn, caused us to have to rescheduled our flight home and cancel our Valentine's dinner plans back in Nashville. We give Carnival Cruise Lines all the credit for handling the situation very well with constant onboard updates of our status, opening phone and internet access for folks to rebook and contact those waiting on them about the delay, putting up passengers overnight in hotels if need be for rescheduled flights (which we did) and including dinner and breakfast vouchers as well. Luckily, Monday was a holiday for us anyway so it didn't mean anymore missed time at work.

We got off the boat around 4 PM and hopped on a prearranged bus over to the Airport Marriott. This isn't a Marriott BY the airport, this is a Marriot IN the airport. Very cool. Thanks, Carnival. The hotel lobby and bar was full of cruise ship passengers waiting to take the next cruise on our boat. They had been there all day waiting to board with Carnival vouchers so most of them were pretty tanked. It just so happened that our friends from Chattanooga, Lavonda and Tim, were in Tampa for the weekend and we decided to all get together for dinner at a place that we heard had great reviews, The Z Grille. Amy and Jeremy got sent to a different hotel and decided to just hang around there for the evening. Our new foursome had a great time at The Z Grille with some amazing food (the reviews were spot-on) and drinks....not a bad way to spend Valentine's Day after surviving Belize and a crippled cruise ship.

Our rescheduled Southwest flight (no charge to us - thanks SWA!) was early the next morning but it was easy to get to the gate since we were already in the airport. We flew back into Nashville with a couple of inches of snow and ice on the ground but we had no delays and a smooth landing. Good to be home but this cold weather really sucks!