A shot of our collection of infamous Carnival towel animals, minus the monkey who was still hanging from the bureau area. We decided to skip the evening shows to come back to the room and pack because all luggage had to be outside your door by about midnight.

Once off the boat, a shuttle took us to the Miami airport where we checked our bags, then we caught a taxi to Bayside, a shopping complex very close to the cruise port we had just left.

While shopping in the Discovery Channel Store, we happened to run into Jerry & Kristy, our dinner mates from the ship! We conned the lady behind the counter into taking our picture, even though she said she doesn't usually allow pictures to be taken inside her store.

After leaving the Discovery Store, we headed over to Hard Rock for lunch.

I had to have a picture taken with Santa Claus and this strange Mayan-god-like statue inside Hard Rock.

This band was performing Latin music and hawking their CDs on the stage area in the courtyard area of the mall.

Deciding that we were hungry, we headed to the enclosed food court area. We found that these pigeons had the same idea, as they cut in line ahead of us.

We located a gelato stand and I tried my first bite of semi-authentic Italian gelato.

Safely inside the airport with hours to spare, we'll end our journey here at our last port of call, "Hot Dog City". The lady working this stand glared at me after I took this picture, even though I made sure she wasn't in it. Anyway, we made it safely back to the cold air of Norfolk, and headed home for some much needed rest after our vacation!