Barcelona and Transatlantic Cruise 2008 – Day 20 – Flight Home
December 16, 2008
Today, the vacation really came to an end as we flew home from San Juan, Puerto Rico ending a wonderful cruise and overall vacation. We had a lot of great family fun on this trip and had many chances to increase our bond as a family. Cruising has been really wonderful for us. Of course, the trip home was not without some events.
We arose from our sleep at the Old San Juan Sheraton about 6 AM in order to head to the airport around 7. Our flight was at 9:45 but we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time. The day before Suzanne had run out to a local Marshalls and bought an additional suitcase to make sure we had plenty of room and that all luggage made the weight requirement. We didn’t want any extra airlines fees coming home.
After getting up, we noticed that the Carnival Victory was already docked across from the hotel. They hadn’t yet begun letting passengers off so getting a taxi for the ride to the airport was a snap – all of about 10 seconds. A brief 15 minute ride and we were at the airport.
While checking in on those wonderful (sarcasm intended) electronic check in machines, the machine tried to tell us that we owed $100 for luggage fees. The machine and then two agents tried to tell us that only 1 bag per passenger was free and the it was $25 per bag after the first. Well, that’s certainly true today, but since we booked our tickets long ago, we were supposed to be exempt from the policy change. In fact, we did not pay any fees in Tucson for luggage when we departed.
It appeared that the system was thinking our date of booking was incorrect. After booking our tickets, Continental canceled our original flight out of San Juan and moved us to another flight. It appears that the system thought our date of booking was the date that Continental made those changes to our tickets. Anyways, Suzanne couldn’t convince the agents they were wrong and it didn’t help that they really didn’t speak English well either. Hello! We were in the United States!!! Your representatives should at least have working ability in the National language!
I wasn’t in a mood to spend much time arguing about $100 and potentially darken a wonderful vacation especially since it was obvious we would have more luck with the travel agent and Continental directly after getting home, so I paid the $100 and we moved through.
Chalk it up to another bad experience with Continental Airlines though. I really miss it when I don’t get to fly American Airlines. I have so much better luck with them and the extra leg room on their flights compared to other airlines makes a big difference too.
The flight to Houston was uneventful and we settled in for a long lay over. Continental had again canceled our original flight after booking and moved us to a later flight. We now had a five hour layover instead of the planned 90 minutes when we booked. Thanks again Continental.
The layover did give us a chance to grab some lunch and for the kids to finish some of the school work they had not done on the cruise ship. Mainly, they had to update their pre-cruise presentations and reports with actual accounts of what they had done.
The flight out of Houston back to Tucson was also uneventful and we landed on Sunday about 8 PM. Originally, we had planned to be back around 2:30 which would give us some time on Sunday to rest before I had to go back to work on Monday and the kids back to school. Now, it was after 9 pm before we arrived home. With the flight times, layover and time changes, it made for an exhausting day.
Still, we count the overall vacation as a wonderful time. I hope to do a wrapup post in a day or so.
Barcelona and Transatlantic Cruise 2008 – Day 19 – San Juan, Puerto Rico
December 15, 2008
Well, it had to happen and today it did. Our wonderful cruise of 2008, the transatlantic voyage, came to an end when we docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico and were forced to disembark from the ship. Unfortunately, it was not a pleasant experience.
The Celebrity Summit docked in San Juan a little before 5 AM in the morning. Expecting some immigration difficulties, the disembarkation proceedings were not scheduled to begin until 7:30 am. We arose about 7 so that we could clear out of the room and get some breakfast at about 8. We were not scheduled for disembarkation until 9:15 since we were staying in San Juan for a night.
We managed to hook up with our new found British friends Roy and Jennifer in the Waterfall Cafe for breakfast. We reminisced a bit about the cruise and the great times that we had on it. It was nice to see them again from breakfast and make sure we said our goodbyes. We exchanged some contact info and hopefully will run into them again some day.
After breakfast we took one last trip around the cruise ship snapping a few pictures of San Juan and getting once last good look at the Celebrity Summit. We gathered our carry on luggage and reported to our disembarkation station. They were running well over 30 minutes late in the process due to Customs issues.
It was finally about 10:00 or so when we got the word to disembark. We did not get far off the ship when we ran into a huge line at the Customs check point. Disembarking in San Juan is a complete mess. They had a whopping 4 lines open for Customs. That’s 4 lines for a cruise ship of almost 2000 folks. Simple math tells you that means and extremely long wait – in a non-air conditioned warehouse/hanger. The facilities were amongst the worst I have seen in cruising and the utter lack of stuff was incomprehensible.
It took us about 75 minutes to reach the actual Customs window. And only about 30 seconds to be waved on through. This was the case with most US Citizens. It took much longer for the foreign nationals who had to be fingerprinted and photographed. Why they didn’t have different US Citizens and non US Citizens lanes like every other Airport or Cruise Terminal I have been in around the World (or citizen vs visitor) is beyond me. The embarkation process for the next set of passengers looked to be just as fouled with the lack of normal pre-thought planning. It’s a safe bet that the disembarkation process in San Juan left a bad enough taste in our mouths that it is unlikely we will every start or end a cruise in San Juan again.
On the good side though, once through Customs we were able to fly out of there. Finding the bags was pretty easy and they were all there. We gathered them up, went outside and hailed a van tax right away. Suzanne had booked the Sheraton Old San Juan hotel for the night using points from my business travels. Plus, she thought it was right across from the pier. Well, actually it is right across the street from the Continental Pier which is used by Cruise Ships for day visits. But, since we were disembarking, we docked at the Pan American Pier on the other side of the harbor. Not a big deal as it was a simple $20 cab ride to the hotel with our 10 pieces of luggage.
We had thought about doing some touring of Old San Juan but everyone was pretty exhausted. The kids just wanted to swim in the rooftop pool and Suzanne and I really didn’t feel like walking around another town. The one place we did want to go was Fort Cristobal but we could see it from the hotel window, so we called it good enough. Yeah, cheesy, but we had been on the go for almost three weeks now.
We even grabbed lunch at the hotel restaurant, A Chicago Burger Company establishment. For dinner, Suzanne walked two blocks down the road and got Subway sandwiches for everyone. The kids swam for hours and we got a bit of hot tub time in. Basically, it was about the right ending to a wonderful, but long trip.
The Celebrity Summit was supposed to set sail from San Juan at 10:00 that night and we wanted to see her sail (unfortunately, without us). The girls were unable to stay awake though and crashed early. Sean and I were on the roof to watch the departure. We say the Royal Caribbean Adventure of the Seas leave at about 9:50 but the Summit remained docked. Finally, at about 10:20 we gave up and went to bed.
I suspect Celebrity was waiting for some additional passengers to arrive. They did the same thing in Barcelona when a plane from Denver with almost 30 passengers was delayed. There was as many passengers on the same plane for the Royal Caribbean ship that was leaving Barcelona at the same time as us too, but Royal Caribbean didn’t wait. It was odd to perhaps see a similar replay of waiting vs not waiting in San Juan. I don’t know if the Celebrity passengers booked their air through Celebrity and the Royal Caribbean passengers didn’t or what but strange how one waited and one did not.
Anyways, tomorrow we fly back home and the vacation will be over. It will be hard to go back to work on Monday.
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