Today, the ship arrived back at Alicante.

Alicante and home.

When I woke up today, I checked, and my case was still outside my room, so on my way to get breakfast, I went to the reception desk to tell them. They said they would send someone up immediately to collect it. I walked to the restaurant where I usually had breakfast and ate a good breakfast before returning to my room. My case had been collected whilst I was at breakfast, and I just hoped it would be at the pickup point waiting for me. On my last cruise, I had a lot of trouble locating my case when leaving the Costa Toscana.

I collected the few items that I hadn't packed that were to be carried in my small man bag and then went to the coffee bar for my last coffee on board. Whilst I was there Helen met me and we were joined by other people that we had met on the cruise. We had to sit and wait to collect our passports back from customs and immigration before leaving the ship. A lot of people complained about doing it this way but I found it easier sitting in the cafe bar than queuing in a terminal at the cruise port. I was one of the first to be called to collect my passport but the others soon followed, collecting theirs. We then had to wait until we were told we could leave the ship.

At around 10:30 am when we left the ship, Helen and I passed by a lot of people that had been on the ship from Los Alcazares, they were waiting for taxis or for friends to collect them to be taken home. We found our cases easily outside the ship and the terminal, but both Helen and I had long waits before leaving Alicante. I had to wait until around 5 pm for my bus and Helen who was flying back to Scotland had to be at the airport by about 7 pm.

We walked into Alicante and stopped at a Mcdonald's so that Helen could use their Internet connection to message home. We sat and had a soda before going for a walk around Alicante. This was not easy for me as my legs were very swollen after the holiday and pulling my heavy case around was hard work. We walked to the street where the sculptured mushrooms were and stopped and had lunch at a restaurant just down the street. The meal I had was supposed to be steak but it tasted more like dried-out shoe leather and I left most of it. After the meal, we walked around for a bit more but my legs were getting worse and we had to stop more often, we sat in a square that had large trees in it giving shade before going to a sandwich shop on the promenade for a coffee.

After finishing the coffee we walked to the bus station, it wasn't far but I had to stop several times because of the pain in my legs. By the time we got there, I had an hour to wait for my bus but Helen couldn't get a bus to the airport from there and had to go back to near the port to catch her bus. We said goodbye to each other and I went to sit and wait for my bus. It turned up and I quickly got on and took my seat at the front of the bus.

The bus was supposed to be a fast bus. I don't know what happened because it took nearly three hours for me to be dropped off at Los Alcazares and it went a long way around to get there. I can only think it had to change direction for some reason, maybe another bus had broken down and we had to pick up extra passengers from another route. When I was dropped off at a bus stop close to my road I had only a short walk to my apartment but my legs were in a lot of pain and the short walk took me a lot longer than it should have. When I walked into my apartment I put my case in my bedroom and immediately collapsed on my bed, waking up the following day.