Cruise: Day 1

First, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to Juan's parents in Miami, for putting us up for two nights, letting me leave my car at their place for a week, and driving us to the port to start our cruise. As if the warmth of Miami weren't welcoming enough, they made it that much more so. And also, thanks to Juan and Kathy for picking us up at the airport and keeping us entertained with their adorable twins.

The bad news is that this pic, courtesy of my MacBook's built-in iSight camera, will be the last one I'll be posting for a while, since my camera broke on the first day of the cruise.

The other bad news is that, since I don't have pics to jog my memory, the following narrative is shaping up to be a stream-of-consciousness account of what may or may not have happened.

We got to the port at around 1:00, and snaked our way through the miles of check-in lines to finally board the ship at about 2:00. The first thing we did was reserve our shore excursions: a beach day at Samana, Dominican Republic, a boat ride to Virgin Gorda via Tortola (British Virgin Islands), and a Kayak/Hike/Snorkel trip on St. Thomas. We started poking around the ship after that, including making our first (of many) trips to the buffet, but it wasn't long before the announcement was made that the staterooms were ready, so we headed to check out our room. We were on Deck 4, the lowest passenger deck. As expected, the room was small, and we had a porthole rather than a window, but the view was still fine, and in fact, better than what one might expect from a porthole.

After attending the mandatory safety briefing (of which I can't remember any details... good thing we didn't sink), we went up to the pool area for the cast-off celebration. We met the entire gang there (Dayong, Ron, John, Terri, and Nicole) for some food and drinks while watching the ship leave port. Had dinner with the gang later at the Venetian-- I didn't find it to be all that spectacular, but everyone else seemed pretty happy with it. We went to the theater afterwards for the first show of the trip: a juggler/comedian. He was ok-- but the trick that would have been the most impressive I would actually consider fraudulent-- he played songs on a flat, electronic piano pad by bouncing balls on the keys. However, it was pretty clear that he wasn't actually playing the notes, but that the entire pad was a trigger for a pre-sequenced song, so that no matter where the balls landed, they played the correct notes.