P&O have done it again. The shuttle bus, we were told, would take us to Merritt Square Mall. It did, but it went via the beach, Walmart and SOME of the shuttle buses also went to another mall called The Cove. Yet another selfish, thoughtless farce from the P&O Arcadia Excursions Desk. Damn every hair on your heads. Some people will NEVER pass this way again, this is their only chance to see the place. Tell us the truth about what we can see and how we can get there. Is that really so much to ask? Disgusting.

Welcome to Port Canaveral. A shop stop. You may recall that I was supposed to be going Astronaut Training here, but that was cancelled too, so that’s it. All there is out here is NASA, nature reserves and shops. There is a lot of water here, a large proportion of which is protected wetlands. The land is linked to other bits of land by narrow causeways with impeccably smooth roads.

P&O parked us a long way out. Granted, it wasn’t entirely their fault this time. This just happened to be where they put the cruise ships, although of the various berths available, it did feel like we had the one that was furthest out of all.

So I went to the mall and mum and dad went out on a nature cruise. We were supposed to meet at the mall later, using texts to communicate. However, their phones couldn’t pick up a signal, so none of my messages went through. I was expecting them around 1pm. I found them at quarter past two, by which time my mind was racing and I was about to return to the ship to search the Medical Centre for them.

In the meantime, I used the free wifi and ate some lovely Chinese food in the food court. But by the time we’d done some shopping, it was time to get the shuttle back to the ship (the last shuttle was, again, at 4pm, despite the fact that we didn’t sail til nearly six). No beach, no Walmart, no time for anything. That’s it. That’s Port Canaveral. If you come here, go to NASA. Otherwise, don’t come. I will leave you with a photo of a dubiously-named motel we passed.