Some people think about getting into the travel business for “all the free travel and great discounts.” That was a good reason to get into this business 20 years ago, but those opportunities are a small fraction of what they used to be. Still, every now and then, an agent gets thrown a bone, and it’s incredibly exciting. I had an offer I could not refuse a couple of years ago. A seven night cruise from Miami was mine for the taking, and all I had to do was get there. No one could go with me, sadly, as I didn’t have a lot of notice. Plane fare wasn’t all that great at the last minute, either, so it ended up being easier for me to drive down the day before boarding. It’s only 9 hours, and I spent the night at a Hampton Inn when I was about 90 miles outside of Miami.

Now, I lived in Atlanta for six years, so traffic and cities don’t scare me. Also, my husband is from Miami, so it’s somewhat familiar to me. But I was alone and using printed directions. Yes, you read that correctly. This low tech middle aged person was using printed directions, not a GPS, not even the nice lady on my phone who I have since come to trust. I’m such a fuddy duddy when it comes to new things, that two years ago, I was still clutching my Mapquest printout from my home printer.

As you come into downtown Miami, there are two ways you can get to the port, one of which involves a tunnel. I had planned to take the tunnel since it’s the easier route, but a digital sign warned me that the tunnel was CLOSED. That’s okay, I thought, I’ll go the other way. (I later found out from others who ignored the digital sign that the tunnel was, in fact, open, and the sign was in error. C’est la vie.) So as I drove down an exit ramp trying to read my shuffled Mapquest papers for the secondary route I didn’t think I’d have to know, I might have panicked a little.

I took a wrong turn. I realized it quickly enough, because the water was now on the wrong side of the road, which was mercifully quiet on a Sunday morning. In fact, when I turned onto a side street to turn around, the street was downright abandoned. Not completely, though. I bypassed one turn-around spot as soon as I realized it was filled with those little tricked-out, low rider, neon colored cars with the black lights underneath them. I had stumbled onto a real life scene straight out of Fast & Furious. Drivers were standing around talking to one another, nodding, getting into their cars, revving engines and such. So I went to the next place suitable for turning around and did so. Meantime, several of the cars took off at high speed with their high-pitched engines screaming. I had one of those moments where you think you might be dreaming, because you’re just a forty-something suburban Volvo wagon-driving baseball mom who lives in a rut nine days out of ten and you’re waiting to see if Vin Diesel gets out of one of those cars or if you get somehow tangled up in it all and arrested for being on the wrong road and have to call your mother-in-law to bail you out of jail. But I digress in a run-on sentence. I turned around and got back on track. Thankfully, there was no race or car chase to entangle me.

Next, I turned into the port. Now, without a second person in the car to help me look, I followed signs the best I could watched for an entrance to Parking Lot E, which was directly across from my ship’s terminal. But the next thing I knew, I was in front of the next parking lot and terminal, and no entrance had made itself known. I figured there must be a way to loop around, and I was right. So I did. But keep in mind that there are about 6 or 8 ships all lined up there, so it’s not a short drive to make one loop. Then I did it again, and again. “Look kids, Big Ben. Parliament,” I said to the empty seats in the car with me. On the third or fourth round, I decided to take the next lot, marked Lot 2. That was a good decision, because apparently E and 2 are the same thing at the Port of Miami. So I got a plum spot right across from the ship, and off I went.

So it’s really not that bad. If I hadn’t been alone, I might not have felt panicky here and there. But believe me, if I can drive down there and find it by myself, anyone can do it. If you have someone in the car with you, as most people will when going on a cruise, it has to be twice as easy. And gosh, now that I’ve done it, I consider myself some kind of expert. On my next cruise out of Miami after that one, I arrived by Uber, and I had to give the driver directions. I had apparently driven around that circle more times than he had.

One last thing to remember is that your ship may not return to the same terminal from which it left. In this case, after all of my fretting over getting a good spot, my ship returned to a different terminal on the other end of the port a week later. I ended up taking a shuttle bus back to my car. This was one of those times I repeated all my travel mottos. Be flexible and go with the flow. These things happen. Keep smiling and move on to the next thing. I’ll still get there on time. And I did!

To book your next cruise from Miami or any other port, contact Azalea Travel!