After a very sleepless night – hard bed, noisy air conditioner, restless mind – we are both up really early with plenty of time to sit out on the balcony watching all the birds – including this great little Red Fody – before repacking and organizing for our 10:15 taxi to the port.  Siddick shows up early – with baguette and bananas in hand!  He is great, and we love how he just hollers up to us from the garden below or from the breezeway outside our door.  Too funny.  And note to self, don’t buy baguettes if we come back here to stay!  Siddick is our baguette connection!

Packed and ready, our same driver appears at 10:15 on the dot to take us to the Port through on and off rain, gorgeous scenery and the big city towns of Quatre Bornes and Bassin-Rose Hill (seriously! Rose Hill – same town name as where I grew up!) and on into Port Louis, arriving at our home away from home around 11:00am.  We are at the  new port facility, which is very nice and virtually empty at this early hour.  Inside, we have a little bit of a wait as document review and boarding hasn’t started yet.  No worries, it is comfortable and air conditioned – and there is coffee, so all is well.

After about 20 minutes we are handed document forms to fill out – there are lots of visas needed for this trip and it makes checking in easier with this pseudo check list – then we are called to check in.  A total breeze and thank God we were in Group 3!  The document check takes a while, but we have everything out and ready for them, check in of course is simple (although somehow, they lost Ed’s new photo or it didn’t transfer to the main system, so he finally gets an “official” new photo), then we are off to immigration.  Here’s where the backup will occur! There is one lone officer who is checking us in, and he is not exactly speedy Gonzales.  We are hoping there will be more officers later, otherwise the crush will be crazy.  As we were one of the first to go through, we have only a short wait before we are back aboard, after our vacation home! 

By the time we get settled in Windows, we’ve already seen and greeted so many of the great crew we adored in November – all of whom are joking about our vacation and now we are back home here.  Such fun – and so sweet.  Lunch is, well, lunch.  Just salad for us – OMG those darn baguettes will haunt us for weeks – we actually brought this morning’s baguette and remaining bananas with us because we couldn’t just waste them and leaving them at the apartment just seemed so rude and ungrateful!  Then onto the rest of the afternoon, hanging out in the Living Room until our cabin is ready, quickly changing, hitting the gym before the raffle drawing and onto the muster drill.  Bags arrive, unpacking commences, then we are off to dinner – first with stops up to Jeannie in Prime C and Susan now in Aqualina to deliver their brownie gifts.  Must keep our fav hostesses in their sweets. 

Dinner at table #2 – darn it, there’s another couple who have #4 and Joel says they’re on for months – but #2 is a fine alternative. They look really familiar, we’re sure we’ve sailed with them before, so they are probably top cruisers.  They can have their preference, we’re good with that! Then Harmony Hive, Audrey’s new band, in the Living Room, and shock of all shocks, we go to the Welcome show!  Then back to the cabin to literally collapse and sleep the deep sleep we both needed after the Mahebourg/Thai bed and sleepless last night.  Awesome first day back on Journey.