In the different travel forums I visit, I find a lot of people asking questions about what to do or where to go the day before leaving for a cruise that departures from either Fort Lauderdale or Miami. I believe that being stuck in a hotel for hours watching bad cable movies is no way to start a wonderful vacation, so I have created a list of places you can go for fun the day or night before your cruise.
Since I live in South Florida, I am very familiar with all these places and I have been to every single one of them, so my recommendations are first hand.
Bayside is a beautiful marketplace in Downtown Miami. You can find everything in there from free live music, to restaurants, shops and nightclubs. There are also a couple of party boats that take you out to the intercostals waters for two hours. From these boats you can see Star Island where many famous artists such as Gloria Stephan, Julio Iglesias and other have their homes. If you want to experience latin cousine, Bayside is the place to go. They have several Cuban, Brazilian and Argentinean restaurants right by the water. Their prices are very reasonable. American food is also available. The place is kids friendly and full of fun. The place is very safe, however you shouldn’t wonder around the downtown area at night. Bayside is right next to the Port of Miami. Most shops close around midnight, but the nightclubs and restaurants are open until 1:00 AM.
Bayside Market Place is also open during the day.
Day Time:
Miami has several places you can visit during the day, and they are all relative close to the Port of Miami.
In a very creative way, Carnival Cruise Line got itself a lot of free press and advertisment when it built the world’s biggest beach ball and released it on the streets of Dallas (maybe it is true what they say about everything being bigger in Texas)
Anyway, CCL broke the previous records with its 10 meters in diameter ball, and it was officially registered in the Guiness Book
I leave you with a video of the world’s biggest beach ball
Spirit Airlines seems to forget that they exist thanks to their customer, and they have also forgotten the most basic strategy for the survival of any company not matter who big or small: good customer service. But then again when not even its CEO cares about the customer, what can you expect from the rest of the employees.
Yesterday one of my cousins came over my house to help him find a good deal on airline tickets from South Florida to Las Vegas. Since I got a good deal before on Spirit, I went to their site and got them a decent price on a round trip Fort Lauderdale – Las Vegas.
During the booking I entered his information, along with his wife and son. Spirit Air gave me the quote and I proceeded to the check out. Immediately after the payment was completed, I noticed that they had charged him for only two passengers instead of three. I soon realized that because my cousin’s name and his son’s name are the same, Spirit booking system rejected the third passenger thinking that I had entered the same person twice (even thought I had put his son’s middle name to distinguish it from his)
I quickly called Spirit Air to clarify the error and include the third passenger in the reservation. To my surprise, Spirit Air wanted to charge an extra $10.00 fee to change the reservation! No matter how much I argued with the customer service person and even her supervisor, they wouldn’t budge. My cousin was left with only two options: either pay the $10.00 fee or pay a $90.00 per person and cancel the reservation and re do it again. Just when I was about to scale my complain to the next person in command, my cousin gave up and agreed to pay the $10.00.
Obviously this is not about the $10.00. This is about a company who wouldn’t even acknowledge their own mistake and do something to remedy the situation. I have heard plenty of complains about absurd fees and bad customer services that plagues the travel industry, but I think this one tops the charts.
As far as I am concern, if you find a competitive rate, fly with a company that really cares about its customer.
In my old blog, I had describe some of the security risks associated with the new RFID tags that are being embeded into the new passports that the US and other countries are issuing.
In that post I wrote how easy would be for someone to steal your identity without even touching your passport simply by reading the RFID chip with a special scanner at a reasonable distance.
Now a group of hackers had gone a step further and demonstrated a technique to change the data stored in the RFID chip thus giving them the ability to crease fake passports with whatever information they choose. They posted their finding and even the methodology they used to hack the passports on their website for the world to see.
Any person willing to spend $80.00 in cheap electronic equiptment can pretty much read your personal information from your passport and then move it to their own fake passport. Picture included.
