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Monday, January 20th, 2025. Port Canaveral, Florida, USA

Neil Wylie

 

I was awakened in the early hours this morning to blindingly bright flashing colored lights right in front of my face; at first, I assumed I had some kind of psychedelic hangover but after a moment things came into focus, and I realized I was staring at a gigantic pair of Mickey Mouse ears. At this point It felt like I was wandering through a bizarre carnival, where the sights and sounds were so surreal that I couldn't tell if I was awake or trapped in a strange dream, but then I realized I was actually awake and staring at one of the funnels on a Disney cruise ship that we had docked beside. Port Canaveral attracts a lot of cruise ships, as the sun came up, I could see five others in our immediate vicinity, and we heard later that there was a total of nine cruise ships in port today. I guess the easy access to both Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center are a magnet for tourists.

 

Originally our cruise itinerary included a 2nd stop at Port Canaveral, after we’d been all the way around South America – I had planned to do an excursion to the space center on our second stop. Just before we left, the itinerary was changed and the second stop at Port Canaveral was cancelled and at that point the space center excursions were sold out. Oh well maybe next time.

 

We opted for the ship’s shuttle bus to Cocoa Beach which sounds tropical and warm, but today it was very cold – think wooly hat and fleece jacket cold. The town of Cocoa Beach is just a long “strip mall” with numerous low rise hotels, it really is a beach-bum kind of place with lots of surfing shops, bike rentals and bars. I have to say we were pretty shocked that this was where the bus had dropped us, it being mid-January, the place was like a ghost town – minus the ghosts. We tried to find a nice coffee shop but had to settle for the only Starbucks in town – and probably the only Starbucks on the planet with no wi-fi.

 

There is a beautiful beach at Cocoa Beach, long and narrow with nice light yellow sand – of course today it was windswept and deserted as we took a short bracing walk back to the bus drop off point.



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