Cadiz- or, is this how retirees feel?

We are losing track of days. I have spoken to retirees before who say without a job to go to, they lose track of what day it is. I have rarely experienced that before, as we seem to always have a marker to define our weeks- work, school (even if it is at home), sports, appointments, something. But not on a cruise ship. I didn’t even realize that we’d lost track of the days until our stop in Cadiz.

It was the 21^st day of our cruise and the day before we disembarked in Lisbon. For backstory, we took A LOT—and I do mean A LOT- of stuff that we normally would not take solely because we were not flying to Europe this time and therefore, could. We convinced ourselves that we would need more on the cruise than we need travelling by air and wanted fancy clothes, full-size toiletries, and entertainment options for 3 weeks by boat. We planned to ship much of it home after the cruise so we could revert to our carry-on only travel preference.

Two days before we disembarked, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that it would be much easier to carry the nonessentials into Cadiz, the last port, and ship from there so that we would have just our essentials when we disembarked in Lisbon.  I was so proud of coming up with a plan that avoided us being overloaded with extra bags on our final day!

I told our steward our plan, and she agreed it was a great idea. I told my husband our plan and he agreed, as well. We went through Security when we got off the ship and they questioned what forms we might need for Customs and called the Guest Services desk… who spoke with me by phone, verified that what we were shipping was clothes, toys, and books and gave us clearance. We then proceeded to the Visitor Information desk for the Port of Cadiz and inquired about directions to carry these large bags to a post office for shipping and they were nice enough to give us a map and mark the path of about 12 blocks.

We were OVER HALFWAY there before we realized it was Sunday.

In our defense, none of the working stiffs that we spoke to remembered, either.

Harrumph.