Adventures in Cruising - Day One

I barely slept at all the night before the cruise. Yes, I was excited, but I didn't sleep because I woke up every 20ish minutes to swallow. This sore throat came out of nowhere and totally caught me off guard. So when I got up, I took some tylenol, some cold medicine, a shot of Airborne, and we finished packing. After a quick stop at Wal Mart to buy some more cold medicine, we picked up Mike and Reyna and headed toward Port Canaveral.

We dropped off our luggage, checked in, and boarded without incident and headed up to the Beach Blanket Buffet on Deck 9 to start our 3-night food orgy. Just ask Scott how many shrimp he ate! After lunch, we went down and checked out our stateroom (which was even bigger than I thought it was going to be) and Mike & Reyna's stateroom (normal size, but with a lovely verandah). Reyna had sent a bottle of champagne and tray of sweets to our room, and that was waiting for us when we arrived. We got our luggage, unpacked our clothes that needed to be hung up, and went back up to Deck 9 for the farewell party.

Actually, we walked through the deck party to go up to the bow of the ship to watch the horizon. We only stopped to pick up the colada/daquari swirl drink in souvenir cups. As you can tell from the picture, it was incredibly windy! I definitely prefer wind to hot and humid.

After the deck party, it was time for the first stage show of the cruise - Hercules: the Muse-ical. The reason I love this show so much is because it doesn't take itself seriously. There's also a lot of pop culture humor injected. This time, Pain and Panic broke out singing "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me" at one point, and Hades made a crack about them being talentless like Jessica Simpson.

I was pretty thrilled with our dining rotation this cruise because my least favorite restaurant was the first night. Parrot Cay ended up being a lot better than I remembered it. I got a grilled sirloin, Scott got the rib eye, and they had creme brulee cheesecake for dessert. Guess what I had. ;-) We actually had 9 people at our table - aside from our foursome, there was a family of 9 blonde people from Iowa. They were nice, but we mostly spent time in our respective groups.

We closed the night exploring the ship and walking out on the deck. We got back to our stateroom to find a towel bunny left by Rudy our housekeeper at turndown. Ultimately, I was super tired and ended up going to sleep around midnight. As you'll see, exhaustion was pretty much my theme for the vacation!