Breakaway Day 7

This was our last full day on board the ship.  The last Park West auction included a variety of artists. Some members of the group requested that pieces which were shown but not sold earlier in the week be brought back out.  In particular, one very large work by Lebo that the auctioneer has been trying to get someone to buy all week finally sold.  I was surprised - it is a very good painting with lots of symbolism,  but it is way to big for most homes.  I think it would look great on the walls of a hotel lobby or the entrance to a corporate office with 20 ft walls!

Anyone who bought anything during the week got an appointment to arrange payment during the afternoon.  The evening cocktail hour was pushed back to 7PM to allow time for all that, and group dinners after that.  We ate at La Cucina again, as expected.

Sunrise view of NYC

After dinner we packed our bags (reserving clothes for the morning of course)  and put them out in the hall.  The ship will arrive back in NYC in the morning.  This has been a very different cruise for us, but still very enjoyable.  Although I have enjoyed going to art auctions on previous cruises, there were never this many and never so many original paintings to see.  The regular auctions are usually mostly on limited edition prints.  We also got to see some artists we hadn't seen before.

 Postscript: It took us 12+ hours from the time we left our cabin until we got home on Sunday.  We got off the ship on schedule but had to wait over an hour for the bus to arrive to take us to the airport.  It did give us a chance to get a great picture of the ship.  If we ever do it again, we'll take a taxi instead.  However, that was just annoying, not critical to us, since our flight wasn't until 2:30PM.  LaGuardia's Delta gates have the most amazing wi-fi setup we have seen anywhere.  The gate area is filled with counters with high chairs and ipads connected to the terminal wi-fi connection.  There are also plugs next to each ipad so you can charge your own devices.  There are only a few non-tech seats along the edges of each gate area.  We were well entertained while we waited for our flight.

The Peter Max art on the bow of the Breakaway

Once we got to Orlando, we found the Villages Airport van quick enough. It was a full van, with 9 passengers and 4 people having to wait for the next one to pull up.  Once we got to the Villages, it took an hour to get to our house because we had to weave through and stop so many times to let people off at their houses.  From now on, I think we will try to use the other Villages Transportation service when we can they don't operate after midnight and don't pick people up at their houses, but having only one pick up and drop off location would probably get us home faster.