Sunday was an extremely long day. Up at 3:00 a.m. to catch a 6:20 a.m. flight from BWI that didn't actually leave till an hour later because of a broken bathroom door latch. The sum total of the fix: a big sticker on the door that read: OUT OF ORDER. Yes, good bet anybody on the plane could have taken care of that.
The transfer to the Celebrity Infinity was also delayed by a MIA bus. Compounding the confusion were seemingly hordes of Ravens fans who must have had some kind of fan package to the game on Sunday - there were extra buses competing for the same pickup spot. Actually took us a while to figure out why sooooo many people on the plane were wearing purple.
Booking the cruise through AAA got us "priority check-in", which did not seem to be much of a bargain. The customs person for the "priority check-in" was wonderfully vigilant - to the point where the priority line moved at less than half the speed of the regular line. We saw people who were on the bus with us through the whole process long before we were.
And then we made the mistake of being truthful when we checked the box on the health form admitting that we had colds.
Note to self: unless you are actively vomiting on the registration desk, don't ever admit to being anything less than being in the bloom of health.
A swift 15 minutes later the ship's nurse came off the ship, took our temperatures, and then acquiesced that we were getting on that boat.
The plan landed at 10:00 a.m.
We were officially onboard at 1:30 p.m.
Once on board the confusion continued - no clue as to where to go, where was lunch (besides being starved, once on board ship of course the main focus is "when are we eating next?"), when would our staterooms be ready, and wheretheheckawee on this boat.
But the ship's crew was happy to sell you things.
Lunch buffet was a zoo. Actually everything was a zoo. Our mantra "this is the worse part it will get better this is the worst part it will get better"...
And it did, after it was announced the staterooms were ready and we beat back a zillion people (only a couple of them with walkers) to cram onto the elevators to the 8th deck.
Things were decidedly looking up by dinner time - great dinnertime conversation, managing to avoid the pitfalls of talking politics.
I don't remember much of the evening entertainment for the evening - all I know is i was out cold before 9:30 and didn't get up for the day till 7:30 the next morning. How often does that happen?
Yesterday's day at sea was a bit of a slow start at first, but that's what cruises are for right? Ate breakfast, went to a lecture on the canal, walked around a bit, ate some more, went back to the room, fell asleep, went to another lecture - and then the Hanukkah thing.
Took a bit of effort to find it - it was not advertised in the daily program. The Guest Services person was great about hunting it down for me. Must have been at least 40 people there.
But not enough latkes. The cantor said she would fix that.
A second great dinner, although it almost fell into the pit of politics.
Evening entertainment was surprisingly good - and I was able to stay awake for the whole thing!
Ok, going to try and post this now, assuming the weak signal let's me.
No comments:
Post a Comment