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| Barb, Me, Peri, and Jyl at the Escape pod. |
Saturday, our travel day to the Port of Galveston, was a disaster. We braved heavy fog the morning of our journey from San Antonio to Galveston. Breakfast at Schobel's Restaurant in Columbus, Texas, was the best part of our drive. All 12 of us met for breakfast. Next, we stopped at Buc'Ees in Katy and filled my gas tank for $1.75 per gallon!!
As we approached Houston, we had an update from the cruise line. Due to fog, our ship was delayed coming into port. They asked everyone to arrive at the cruise terminal two hours later than their originally scheduled embarkation time.
Our car full of ladies decided we had plenty of time to stop and shop at Walmart in Galveston before making our way to the terminal. We had until 3:30 p.m. to get there and board. All of our group of 12 made it to the terminal on time (apparently at the same time as 2,400 other cruisers).
Let me paint a verbal picture as to what happened next. Picture two big cruise ships waiting to dock, both having been delayed for hours by the fog. Both ships docked about the same time and disgorged their passengers. Anyone who drove had to get to the parking lots and retrieve their cars. Meanwhile, two cruise ships worth of people were arriving to embark at approximately the same time, even though we had been told to wait an extra two hours.
Chaos ensued. It took us a while to get to the terminal due to the long line-up of cars. Peri and I dropped Jyl and Barb off at the terminal and we went to park. They took care of our large suitcases which we left with them, along with tips for the porters. We kept our overnight bags with us. Jyl and Barb got in line and we would call to let them know when we were on our way back to the terminal.
Peri and I were gridlocked in front of the terminal. There were parking lot attendants (?) directing traffic and allowing people to cross the road from the shuttles to the terminal. The wait to get out of the terminal drop-off area seemed interminable.
When we got to a point past the people streaming across the street, we were directed into a very small line of cars in the middle of the closest parking lot/ terminal drop off. To our left was a full line of cars, to our right was all the traffic streaming out of the terminal. We were at the front of our line so we thought we'd get to go soon. Boy, were we wrong.
The parking attendant out in the main thoroughfare from the terminal kept that traffic moving, but he wasn't allowing any of us from our line to merge, not even one car. The line of cars to our left was merging regularly. People in our line were getting testy. Someone tried to go around us and cut in front. I didn't let them, nor did the shuttle for one of the hotels, who also wasn't being let out into the main flow of traffic. It was about 15-20 minutes before we were allowed to move.
At that point, I asked one of the traffic directors how to get to Parking Lot A. He told me we needed to go onto Harborside Drive and turn right. But, when he finally directed us to move, he forcefully told us not to go on Harborside Drive and directed us on a side road away from Harborside Drive. Now what?? Signage for Lot A was non-existent on that back road. We saw the backside of the lot he had told us to go to, but no entrance was there except for shuttles to the parking lot.
We drove through what looked like a train yard and finally found a way to get back to Harborside Drive. We turned left and found Lot A; however, they had the left-hand-turn lane blocked into Lot A and security wouldn't let us turn there. I rolled down my window and asked how we were supposed to get in and she told us to go to the END of the line. No way, Jose! We would have already been in that line if the parking attendant in the cruise ship lot had sent us the way he told us we needed to go in the first place.
I was very frustrated by this point. Lot A was only about 1/2 mile from the cruise terminal. There was a break in traffic going the other direction to Lot A, so I made a quick three-point turn and inserted myself in the line. It still took us forever to get to the lot. Once there, a parking lot attendant scanned our ticket and told us to drive forward and check in at the blue canopy. I tried to do that but another person directing traffic told us to turn through the middle of the lot and go back to park farther away from the terminal. Arrgh!
From there, Peri and I decided to walk to the cruise terminal. It's a good thing we didn't just take the shuttle (which had a line that looked like we would have to wait for four more shuttles to come before we could even board one). As we were walking through the parking lot, I stopped at the blue canopy, like the lady at the entrance gate told me. Apparently, I needed to put a hangtag on my mirror to show I had paid for parking. If we had boarded a shuttle, I wouldn't have known that. I walked all the way back to the car and put in the hangtag.
All that being said, it took 1-1/2 hours from the time we dropped off our passengers until we made it back to the terminal to join them in line and it was only about 1-1/2 miles roundtrip to Lot A. We made it just before our friends entered the terminal building.
Once in line, we filled out a health survey to let the cruise line know we didn't have a fever, sneezing, or coughing. Then we slowly made our way through the maze of people (moo) to the embarkation station where we showed our tickets and were given our stateroom keys.
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| Oh, the lines! Wow. |
From there, we were sent to have our belongings scanned and, finally, allowed on the ship. Whew. That took forever. I needed a glass of wine! And lunch. The wine had to wait because I couldn't get the top off the bottle.
Because of fog in the Port of Galveston, we could not leave at our scheduled time of 5:30 p.m. We finally moved out at 11:15 p.m. This, of course, put us behind our originally scheduled arrival time in Cozumel. Luckily, we had a day at sea to make up time.
Next up: A day at sea.
