March 18, 2026 – Tampa, FL – Mostly Cloudy – Chilly – 60F
Oceania Insignia arrived in Tampa ahead of schedule (in the dark around 5 AM). That's when the bow thrusters came on.
They come on with a
distinctive spooling and then a very obvious shuddering as they maneuver the
ship. I got a few pictures outside our
window as we made our way through the channel on our way to Terminal 2,
Oceania’s home in Tampa. It's not a very scenic sail in so arriving in the dark is actually OK.
Now that we have returned to Tampa, here is the completed itinerary indicating how far we have sailed (3,267 nautical miles - most of it getting from Tampa to our first port and then back to Tampa - six sea days in total).
NOTE: For some reason, I have taken a shower on
this cruise 15 out of the 16 days (including today) – just helps me wake up and get ready for the
day. This was also made possible by the gap between getting up and the opening
of the Terrace Café. Besides, the
showers, while compact, have good water pressure and the water is hot. Showers on board Insignia are like showers in a spa.
Today is a
first in our travels – Room Service on Disembarkation Day. We’ve been on Oceania before and that wasn’t
offered (not on Regent either). The food
came pretty much on time at 7:00 AM – Frosted mini-wheats (not available in the
Café I don't believe), two pancakes and two OM eggs for me – French Toast and two OM eggs for
Ellen. Lots of coffee and hot water for
tea. A low stress way to have breakfast
on departure. A nice customer friendly
perk from Insignia.
I woke up this
morning with a very painful left leg – I never know why this happens but it is
going to slow me down a bit today. I
will soldier my way through with the help of anti-inflammatory meds.
We are Departure Group
Blue 1 – a preflight tour of Tampa and then a drop off at TPA around 1 PM. Our
groups was called right after we left our room and we proceeded off the ship,
through the quickest immigration check I can remember (maybe 30 seconds) and then to the
baggage claim area. We found our bags right away and were directed to the right
of the building where our yellow bus was waiting. Our bags were stowed and we took our
backpacks on board with us. I think our
guide was Priscilla and our driver was definitely JJ (ex Secret Service and
constant story teller). Priscilla came
over from Germany a while ago and is a pretty good guide. JJ likes to tell stories.
The tour left pretty much on time – after a ride through the city of Tampa, our first stop was the Henry B. Plant Museum,
housed in the former Tampa Bay Hotel (a posh resort back in the day) and now part of the University of Tampa. The hotel was built in the Moorish Revival Style with minarets with crescent moons on top.
It’s a magnificent building – we had 45 minutes here. Before we went inside, I took a picture of the Henry Bradley Plant Memorial Fountain which sits in the cobblestone street in front of the Hotel.
It was chilly so we went inside (they also had facilities in the lower level). The Lobby is very ornate and looks as fancy as you might expect from a fancy hotel Lots of dark wood and columns and statues.
I took pictures of the statues in the lobby before finding seats. Ellen spoke to someone who worked there and she told her they were having a book sale - a lot of boxes were delivered to a table in the lobby - all full of books.
There were a lot of students, or potential students, touring today. I stayed mostly in the lobby in those comfortable chairs while Ellen walked around. There are two notable statues in the lobby, “Esmeralda”
from the Hunchback of Notre Dame novel and “King Henry IV as a Child”.
There is a back porch to the Hotel Lobby and we checked out the stuff out there. Some of the furniture was in good shape and priced very reasonably (too big to put in the overhead bins).
Then it was
back to the bus – it’s an old bus with dated upholstery and interior walls; the
seats are really sunken (difficult to get in and out of, at least for me and especially today on a bum leg).
Our drive took us next to the posh Bayshore Neighborhood, along Bayshore Blvd and Hillsborough Bay. Very fancy condo units fronted the bay.
Our tour continued along the Hillsborough River and alongside the Convention Center.
After passing through downtown Tampa, we arrived at our second stop, Ybor City.
Ybor City in a historic neighborhood and has a New Orleans vibe (wrought iron balconies) and two story buildings. The city was established by Vicente Martinez-Ybor
and became the “Cigar Capital of the
World” in the 19th Century.
The cigar industry turned Ybor City into a city of immigrants – Cubans,
Italians, and Spaniards. It has been
designation a National Historic Landmark District. There are still some people
rolling cigars but that is mostly for show.
The main drag is 7th Avenue (Centro Ybor).
The bus parked
at a parking lot not far from the entrance to 7th Avenue. We were here some years ago and it actually
looks like some new stores might have sprung up. It is about 11 AM and restaurants and shops
are about to open. There are more people
on the streets than our last time here – it was hot that afternoon, keeping the
foot traffic low.
The iconic Ritz Ybor sits at the entrace of 7th Avenue - it is now an events venue.
Our guide had
mentioned that she was going to walk to the “Pizza Pizza New York Pizza” place
for lunch. We thought that would be a good
ideas as well since we ate about four hours ago. The advertised special was two slices of New
York Pizza plus a drink for $8 – sounded good to me especially when the slices
were large and the pizza was good. We
hadn’t had good pizza since we arrived in Tampa prior to this cruise (“Street
Crust Pizza”) – finding good pizza has been a real struggle while we were
home. We ate outside – very rustic.
We continued our walk for another four or five blocks down 7th Avenue
until my aching leg could take no more so in order to be able to get back, we turned around and headed for the bus. On the way back, we got some additional pictures along the main drag including one of us and a big bug and me and Roland M.Manteiga, a newspaper publisher.
When we got to the parking lot, Ellen walked
a bit further to check out the shops and I went to the bus. She arrived shortly after.
Our next stop
would be TPA, voted, according to our Tampa-positive guide one of the top customer
friendly airports in the country. The
bus dropped us off at the baggage claim level – from there, we took an
escalator one floor up to the ticketing counters. After some wrong turns, we found United
Airlines. Not crowded at all. I used the kiosks to print bag tags and
boarding passes. We dropped our bags,
found the A entrance (we are at Gate A10), and headed to TSA Precheck for what
might be a long wait.
When we
arrived at TSA Precheck, there was no one in line. We scanned our passports had
our picture taken and sent our stuff through the scanners. The entire process took less than five
minutes – in fact, there was an electronic sign leading to the TSA line that
indicated that it took only three minutes to get through.
Gate A10 was
only halfway down the concourse and we found semi-comfortable seats with
working chargers (after finding dud after dud).
UA329 was scheduled to depart TPA at 4:47 PM – It was about 1:30 PM so
we had a good wait until boarding at around 3:40 PM or so. I spent most of the time filling in the gaps
in my cruise log and Ellen was reading.
As the
boarding time grew closer, a check of the App indicated that our inbound flight
from Denver was delayed by, we found out later, a brief power outage at
Stapleton Airport. It was going to be
about 30 minutes late. The flight
arrived and it took about 15 minutes for people to get off and another 15
minutes to clean the aircraft.
We boarded our A321neo with Group 2 at around 4:30 PM – we are in 9A/9B – super pricey Mileage Extra Seat – somewhat more legroom. We pushed on time (slats and flaps in takeoff configuration).
We took off at 5:09 PM (pretty good considering we were supposed to leave at 4:47 PM).
The plane flew over Tampa Bay before heading to Chicago.
We were dismayed to find out that
just two rows in front of us and on the other side, there was a screaming baby
(not just any screaming baby but Olympic class). Screamed the entire flight – Ellen resorted
to ear plus and I tried to tune it out.
The flight was uneventful – mild chop for five minutes – but it did provide some nice views as we crossed over Lake Michigan (cloud covered)
then over Evanston (the Chicago Skyline was amazing), and final approach into ORD.
We arrived at 7:10 PM just 15 minutes late. Our gate, B9, was not far from the baggage claim and one bag came out right away with the other one some minutes later. I had pre-reserved a cab and because, they were following the flight, the cab company sent me a text asking if I had my bags. I replied and got the cab number. It was cold outside (in the low 40s) so I waited for the cab and signaled Ellen to come out. Our driver didn’t say a word on the way home, which was good, because we were both tired.
He found our condo – we got help from the doorman getting our bags down the lobby stairs. Home after 16 days in the Caribbean. A good cruise even though excursions were not really part of the experience. No matter, the weather was perfect, our special meals were delicious, and my lecture gig was successful.
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