Cruise Day 1 - Leaving Lauderdale!

Our view taking off from DFW

With decades of traveling, mistakes still happen.  Somehow, Bill’s toiletries bag, which was placed NEXT to the two open suitcases during packing, never actually made it into any of the open bags.  Surely it will ready and waiting when we get home.  

After breakfast, Bill worked until it was time pack up and go.  We called the Uber, played Tetris getting bags in the trunk and had a messy drive to the port and our pier.  Once there, we whisked through almost everything, getting on the ship maybe 20 minutes later.  

Our Mini-Suite

First step, find the room, which was ready!  We dropped our bags, made a work call, and ran to lunch before they stopped seating.  It was a bit of a line, but lunch was good once it started.  And a nice starter drink to segue into vacation mode!!

Always interesting watching "bunkering" (fueling)!

After lunch and checking in for our muster station, we went back to the room to hang out and hope to unpack.  I think after a number of trips, we are packing less, and our “mini-suite” has some decent storage, so most everything had a place.  We were still unpacking during sail away.  As this is Princess, the horn was the theme music for the 80’s TV show “The Love Boat”.

Still fueling. 
Offloading "waste" to be made into biofuel (look up Firefly)

Port Everglades beach?

We found our way up to the “Sanctuary” deck.  A little clarity.  We are in a “mini-suite” which has most of the benefits of full suites, but not all of them.  But it is included in the “Sanctuary” which is a “partitioned cruise”.  We have access to exclusive spaces, an exclusive restaurant, and a few other benefits.  The pool deck for the Sanctuary was pretty sparse of people, which is to our liking (being two introverts).  The restaurant for lunch was exclusive to Sanctuary guests, but three parties in front of us were not, and were turned away.  Some of them were at our restaurant because “the line was shorter”.  That didn’t work out for them.  Oopsie!  

Anyway, upstairs on Deck 18, we wandered around checking out the space, and got a drink.  We sat in a lounge bed sipping away, and pondering the next 330 hours we’ll have here.

There was almost no one up onthe Sanctuary deck!

Apparently the "Duck" is a big thing.

Dinner was at 6PM, so we got ready and headed off to the Italian restaurant for dinner.  When registering, Theresa noted we wanted meal service “fast”.  Well, fast they did!  We were done in under an hour.  It was a specialty restaurant, so they had a bit of a limited menu.  We think they had the options staged pretty close, rather than made to order.  But the food was tasty.

We headed to the trivia (Comedy Movies) and, well, got 8 out of 20.  It was bit obtuse (like what was the name of the town in Blazing Saddles).  We wrapped up the evening with the comedian, who was pretty good.  His act mostly was going off of the audience.  Prior to his act, the Cruise Director gave some details, including some trivia about the who was on the ship.  There are 4086 passengers, about 2400 of which are US, 600 Canadians, 117 Brits, and 34 Germans.  It’s pretty amazing how fast that drops off!

Cheers!