Embarkation and Day 1 (At sea)

Holy crap, the cruise is today!!!! I got up at 7 AM, and raced around for an hour, and suddenly everything was done. Yay, two hours with nothing to do but watch the seconds tick by slowly. And slowly they did, and finally we were on our way, arriving in Beantown without any major incident. A bit of a screw up with the porters (or lack thereof), and we then made it on board quickly and dumped our stuff in our room. Yeah, our room. I should know better. It’s a lot smaller than the pictures. Duh. Not sure how you call this a suite (or even a junior suite), but it’s good enough for our needs, just was hoping for something a touch more roomy. More on the cabin, perhaps tomorrow.

We went exploring and my first impression was this ship is pretty small (by the standards of someone who usually sails with 3000 other people). The other impression was, my God, we’re young. Guess that shouldn’t be a surprise! As we settle in on day 1, though, we’re really liking the size of the ship, and there is plenty to do. They pack a lot into this ship. Still, the atrium at 3 stories was a wee bit shy of the towering 8 or so Royal Caribbean has on their ships.

I have a Neesh sighting in the atrium.

It was steaming hot in Boston and after the emergency drill, we went up to the aft pool bar where some folks got together and I recognized Randy quickly, a guy I met on the forum, and his wife Deen. Really great folks and it was a pleasure to chat with them for a while. We also lucked out that Steve and April, the friends that came with us, were ready for dinner just as we were. I LOVE the portion size here, it’s smaller than most restaurants, but perfectly sized for us to get through all the courses. The food is definitely a step up, also.

So we drank, we ate, we hung out, we found the one bar you could smoke in, we crashed at midnight. Or really 1 AM, since we already had our first time change. Up at 9 AM, happy to finally get 8 hours of sleep. Nothing but blue sky above, and some fog on the horizon, and in the 60s. Glad to be out of that heat! “Yeah, baby, it’s going to be sunny today!” Of course, an hour later the fog rolls in. My wife has given up on believing a word I say. Remember the post I made “kidding” about crappy views? Here we go!

View from the balcony, day 1

The fog lifted for a bit, and the poor guy with a stopwatch got a break from blowing the ship’s horn every 2 minutes, so I did manage a wake shot.

I give the ship a stern look

So today’s agenda was eat a light breakfast, play some slots and blackjack, eat lunch, have a drink at the aft pool, have a couple drinks at the Crow’s Nest, and get ready for formal night #1. Along the way we met more folks from the cruisecritic.com forum, including Abra and Shel and were talking up a storm. We’ll probably know most everyone here by the end of the cruise. :)

They have happy hours here, so we met Steve and April and proceeded to get (more) happy. Four Molsons later (I should be speaking fluent French by the end of the cruise, too), we went to the Main Dining Room and I finally got to eat Beef Wellington after watching Chef Gordon Ramsey send so much of it back on the TV series Hell’s Kitchen. It was stupendously yummy. Whoever decided to mix steak and pastry together was a genius.

Played some more blackjack and we went off to hear the DJ before I hit The Wall. Meaning, I just got suddenly exhausted. Beddy-bye time. Zzzzzzzz.