Jim and I woke up fairly early. I was already excited, although I don’t think that it had hit him yet. After 30 minutes of whining, Jim finally got up and we headed to Panera for some breakfast. The Thursday before, I had taken it upon myself to mow the lawn (yes, a sanding ovation is in order here). My good dead was rewarded with a nice, painful wasp or hornet sting on my back. It was fine up until this very moment when the crappy Tampa humidity hit it and it starting itching like crazy!!! So we stopped at Walgreen’s, grabbed some itch stuff along with some last minute things and headed back to the hotel for some last minute packing.
I had confirmed the shuttle to the port for 10 am (at least 3 times….), and it was only 9. I had to just settle down and watch TV until it was time to leave. We headed down to the lobby about 5 minutes early and waited…and waited…and waited. No shuttle. Apparently, they had forgotten about us (because confirming 3 times is apparently not enough). So Jim played some Tetris, and I watched the beautiful Tampa humidity change into beautiful Tampa downpour.
We were finally on our way around 10:20 and while Jim was playing Tetris, I was waiting for the first sights of the Red, White and Blue “Whale Tail.” Took me 3 tried to get Jim’s attention and look at the ship!
We pulled into the offloading area, gave the porters our larger bags and got into line. Since we were so early, there weren’t too many people at the port yet, and we were through security, registration and on the boat about an hour later.
First views of the first cruise we have ever been on...impressive! We thought the boat would be wider, but found out it was built narrow to fit through the Panama Canal. We would later realize that we really loved the size of this ship!
Since, again, we were so early, we could not go to our rooms. This gave us time to enjoy my first yummy Rueben and first Drink of the Day!!
We then took some time to go and explore the ship. Jim was kind enough to roll my pretty pink and white polka-dotted suitcase around, and took the stares from other guys like a man :-)
We checked out our dining table for that night. When we entered, we realized that we were tucked away at a long table for 12 in the private room, away from all of the dining excitement. I wasn’t too happy about this but I was willing to give it a shot.
We also met, for the first time, Marissa and Joey, who were also honeymooners (there were 140 couples of them on this trip alone!), and who would become our trip buddies for the week. They were lost in the Enchanted Forest. We then headed up to the deck to see the luggage being loaded. Since we used the hideous ugly luggage, we happened to actually view our luggage being loaded onto the ship. We also witnessed one of our bags fall off the cart and tumble back onto the pier. Very amusing.
1:30 came and we headed to our room. I had known from Cruise Critic that the rooms had ample storage, so all I really needed to bring was a power strip, which came in really handy. We popped into the room, checked it out, took a look at our balcony (will never cruise without one…ever!) and changed into our bathing suits.
Muster was to take place at 3:30 so we had a bit of time to relax. I did forget to mention to Jim that the pool was saltwater….oh well! We splashed around for a bit, until the muster drill announcements were becoming more frequent, and then decided to head back to shower, change and grab our lifejackets. I literally had to jump in and out of the shower as the actual alarms were going off now. I actually forgot my camera in the stateroom and made us go back to get it (can’t miss out on the lovely lifejacket photos!). But we did make it to muster in time and ended up being at the front of the rows, which was my intention, so I wouldn’t get squished. Muster was muster, we had a funny muster leader guy, so that made it more amusing, and soon enough, the horn was blowing and the we were pushing away from the pier.
As we were heading up to put our lifejackets back, we ran into our Enchanted Forest friends, who seemed to have found their way out. We chatted with them for about an hour, took a look around and realized we were probably the only 4 left on deck with lifejackets….it was time to head up and unpack anyways, and thankfully, the bags were there, intact and will our liquor and wine still in them about 5 minutes before we arrived. Being that we were on vacation for 7 days, we actually unpacked. And Carnival really does give you a ton of room for all of your stuff!
We spent a little time getting acquainted with our balcony and our first drinks on it (Rum Cream!!)
We then ventured out to the top deck to go under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge (which truly takes a long time to get to. You see it on the horizon for forever but don’t end up going under it until about 6:30). In our discussions with fellow cruisers, we realized that maybe we didn’t want late dinner seating after all. We could not go speak to the Matre ‘D until 6:00, and I was a little concerned that we would miss the bridge, but apparently, again, it takes forever to get to! We asked Dessi about changing to Your Way dining (I slipped in there the fact that it was our honeymoon) and she said she would see what she could do.
So after all of this, we raced up to the funnel area to watch the approach. It was exceptionally windy (and stayed that way pretty much the entire time we were at sea, making the boat rock a lot in some cases). I thought going under the bridge was pretty cool, considering the funnel gets very very close to the underside of the bridge.
After all of the excitement, I can’t really remember what we did next!! 8:15 came around and it was time to head to dinner. I cannot believe that there was actually a line to get in! This is a dining room with assigned seating….oh well. We approached our table and realized that our once long table had been split into 3 tables of 4. I was a little disappointed that we would not be sharing our meals with other people, as they all seemed to be our age. But we sat down and realized that we were the only ones at our table (same with the other 2 tables), so we were happy to just be alone together. Our server, who was not all that great or personable (I can’t even remember her name) came over and started taking our orders…and what do you know, in come our table mates, 20 minutes late, which pushed back our dining time since the server had to wait for them to be ready to order. These people had been on numerous Carnival cruises, knew how the system worked, and basically said – oh we are always late for everything….great. At this point, I was thinking that I could NOT handle this for 7 more dinners and that our only hope is that Dessi would pull through for us.
I am not sure if it was the company, the exhaustion, or the annoyance (plus the dining room was rocking a little…) but dinner was just ok. I had soup (good), Caesar salad (good) and sweet and sour fried shrimp (greasy). Jim had chicken fingers (McDonald’s taste), salad (fine) and Ribs (super saucy and sweet. Although tender, not that great). Because our kind and considerate table mates decided to come in so late, we decided to leave and skip dessert. We were not hungry anyways, and I suspected Showtime was not worth it. And anyways, Bingo was about to start!!
So we just grabbed some dessert from the coffee bar and headed to the Follies Lounge. The cake was huge and ok, and worth the $2 to just get out of the dining room!! We played and lost at Bingo, and stayed for the Welcome Aboard show. The dancing and music was somewhat lame (sorry!!) but the comedian was funny. We wanted to see him the next night at the adults only show but did not make it.
One of our new honeymooner friends making a silly fool of himself (young guy in blue polo):
After all of this, we made a small donation to the casino and headed off the bed, ready for our first fun day at sea!!
Our friend tonight:
Mr. Walrus (???)
All Embarkation day photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimandjulieacuna/sets/72157621889774213/
Next up:
Fun Day at Sea!
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