Saturday, January 21st, was an early start. We’d spent the previous week in Long Island at the “almost in-laws” place. They were in Africa whilst we stayed there but came home the same day we were leaving. This provided the perfect handover between them and us for ‘custody of the Coops’, aka looking after Cooper, our dog, whilst we were away.

The alarm went off at 3:45am. We’d packed the night before, so we just needed to put our final toiletries in the bags, let Cooper out for a very early morning commune with nature, and then get in the car. We drove to Flushing, Queens, where we left the car at the family’s parking lot and took an Uber for the final leg to JFK. As we dropped off our bags at Delta, we prayed that we wouldn’t have the same sort of pre-cruise experience that we’d had last time.