Miami, Florida.

When Lynn and I are traveling, I write and schedule Cellpic Sunday and Travel Tuesday posts well in advance so that I don’t have to be creating content while traveling (other than processing photos and doing the weekly Lens-Artists challenges, anyway.)

If all goes as planned, on the day this post is published, we are scheduled to conclude our 7-day cruise on the Norwegian Bliss, a Breakaway-Plus class ship launched in 2018. We’ve been watching the cruise restart carefully and as this is written in early September, there have been some fits and starts, and lots of covid protocol changes, but so far cruising for vaccinated passengers appears to be going well. I am appreciative of the fact that the Norwegian Cruise Line insists on 100 percent vaccinated passengers and crew. There won’t be anyone under 12 on our cruise, and the 4,000 passenger Norwegian Bliss will be operating at only 60 percent capacity.

If we pass the two Covid tests required (one within 72 hours of cruise, and one provided by NCL on the day of the cruise,) we will be allowed to board. We will be embarking from Long Beach, California on an itinerary called the Mexican Riviera, basically the western coast of Mexico, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta. Tropical storm Nora has recently caused damage in the two southern ports, so there may be an itinerary change, but we’ve seen nothing from NCL so far.

About the photo: In February 2020, we departed Miami for a Caribbean cruise and upon our departure went past the Norwegian Escape, the first of NCL’s four Breakaway-Plus class ships launched in 2016. The Bliss and Escape are two of the largest ships in NCL’s fleet. At that time we were excited to see the Escape as we thought in a few weeks, we’d be sailing in Europe on our first trip on the continent.

The Escape was docked at the new NCL Miami terminal building, then under construction. As of September 8, the new terminal is open and functioning and the NCL Gem is sailing 100 percent vaccinated out of Miami thanks to an injunction blocking Florida’s law against asking whether passengers are vaccinated or not… but I digress…

The image was captured with my Samsung S6 cell phone, processed in Lightroom, and tweaked in Luminar 4. For a closer view, click on the image to check it out in HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner