The Weather is Here, You Know the Rest

I arrived  in Ft. Lauderdale on Tuesday morning. In case you don't read my blog regularly, I'll fill you in.  I'm attending the CLIA Cruise3Sixty conference in Ft. Lauderdale.  It's an annual conference for travel agents that features a week of seminars, ship inspections, opportunities to meet with representatives from various cruise lines and tourism boards as well as offers credits toward travel agent certifications.  So, it's a pretty big deal if you are a travel agent.  This is CLIA's 10th anniversary.  So I suppose this year is even a bigger deal than past years.

Since I arrived I've attended seminars on everything from being my own paparazzi to the Caribbean island of Martinique which is apparently magnifique! Now Martinique's tourism board seems to be on top of it. They sent the nicest woman with a beautiful french accent who not only gave everyone attending gifts, but at the end of her presentation, she gave away a few bottles of rum and a trip for 2 to Martinique.  Then she offered us hor de'orves and and wine.  I've been to 8 other seminars, hers was by far my favorite.  Not only because of the wine, but also, because she had a great product to sell.  I really want to go to Martinique now!

Tomorrow begins the trade show.  I'm really looking forward to that.  27 cruise lines are here to show off at the trade show.  I can't wait to become aquainted with some of the cruise lines that I have never experienced before.  I finally have my first ship tour on Saturday.  The first one I'll be visiting is Oasis of the Seas.  That is really exciting for me.  I've sent people on Oasis before.  But being able to see it in person is going to make it so much easier to answer questions about it.

I still haven't been anyplace in Ft. Lauderdale other than my hotel and the convention center where the conference is being held.  So, I'm hoping to have time to do some stuff around the city on Saturday afternoon.  When I was here before, we did the water taxi thing.  It was fun.  If nothing else, I might do that again.  But I'd really like to do an Everglades tour too.  So, we'll see how it goes.

For now I guess I'll just leave you with a few photos that I've taken since I arrived. Have a great evening!

The view from my balcony

The view from my table ;-)

A scarey selfie of me today at lunch.