Day 3: Embarkation Day

Since I crashed super early on Sunday night, Monday I was up super early. Again! Like before sunrise. Man was not amused about that either. 🙂

We ordered room service for breakfast. There’s nothing better than having coffee while listening to the seagulls (by the way, they really do sound like they’re saying “Mine” like from Finding Nemo!). We had a leisure morning of hanging out in the hotel room until we had to check out and head to the port.

As we left the hotel, there were taxis outside the hotel dropping off and picking up. Two cabbies argued over getting us as their fare. Man being Man told them they could argue later but we had a ship to be on. The funny thing about him is, he could always make the cab drivers snicker. In Miami, they like to use their horns. A lot.

A ten minute cab ride got us to the port and right to our ship – the Destiny. Seems fitting for our trip. 🙂 We love symbolism. At the curb, we handed off our luggage to the porter, who was kind enough to let us know it was then time to tip him. Always love when they tell us to tip them, eh?

It wasn’t quite noon yet but the line to board the ship was already long. We had to go through another security checkpoint similar to the airport. They checked our passports against our boarding passes. Except with this one, though, we didn’t have to strip down. Only had to put our carry on bags onto the conveyor for x-raying.

Then we had to figure out what our next step was. Luckily, we’re fairly intelligent individuals and headed to the check-in kiosk where we set up our shipboard account. They assigned us a “sign and sail card” and then it was up the escalator to the gangway. Woohoo!

From there, we discovered what would be a constant part of the trip: pictures! We had our first one taken just before heading onto the gangway. Later we’d buy that picture with a background that says Miami. It’s cute. (Sorry, I don’t have it electronically or I’d post it.)

Onto the ship, another long line to board. Once we boarded, they shuffled us up to the Lido deck, a place where we’d hang out for most of the trip. Our stateroom wouldn’t be ready until 1:30 so it was a good place to hang out and wait for the ship to sail.

We found two deck chairs to hang out on and I had my first fruity drink to kick off the trip. The music was loud and the breeze was cold. In fact, we practically froze in Miami. In the picture to the right, this is a shot of downtown Miami from the Lido deck.

After an hour or so of sitting there, we roamed the ship to get familiar with it. We found our stateroom. It was on the Main deck forward with an ocean view. Which sounds really cool but it turns out it was quite noisy when the ship docked at oh-damn-thirty.

But I digress… So after several hours of roaming, it was time for the safety briefing. In case, you know, the ship sank we’d need to know where to go and how to get there. And by the way, the horn they sound just before leaving port … really loud. REALLY loud.

Here’s a shot of our stateroom.

After the safety briefing (another sheep-herding moment), it was back on the deck to watch the ship leave the port. The wind was blowing pretty good and quite cold. In fact, we froze. But leaving port was so awesome. We stood there until we were officially out to sea, then we headed back to the stateroom to find our luggage waiting for us.

On to dinner that night where we met our waiters for the evening. The first night, we sat at a table for two. Next to us was another table for two and then another one on the other side of that. There was a single guy sitting at the middle table chatting up the couple on the other side of him. We noticed this right away because the guy barely drew breath the entire time he talked. And the poor couple next to him looked completely bored and annoyed by him.

Which sent us into fits of laughter. We immediately dubbed him The Talker. We never did figure out why he was on a cruise all alone. By the time the couple had dessert, the man looked completely beaten down by this guy. I had this horrible feeling that after they left, he would turn to us and try to engage in conversation. However, Man, who was sitting across from me and could see the guy, was giving him the look that said, “Don’t even try it.”

He finished up (after having two entrees and two desserts) and left. As soon as he was long gone, we busted out laughing. Pictured here is a shot leaving port following another Carinval ship way in the distance. Off to the right is a Norweign ship.

After dinner, we checked out the bars. We started with the disco bar but that’s so not the Man’s scene. We hit the karaoke bar next and watched some incredible people sing (and some really bad singers). Then it was on to the piano bar where Judy and her little friends were drunkety-drunk-drunk and really ruining things for the rest of us. You know the type. They get totally smashed and think they’re cuter and awesomer than anyone else in the bar. And Judy loved the piano guy. She hit on him constantly, sat next to him at the piano and insisted on a duet. She was highly annoying.

We figured Judy would be hurting in the morning as we left the bar (somewhere around midnight) to head to our stateroom and crash. After all, the next day we were stopping in Nassau, Bahamas!

And that’s it for today. Tomorrow: Nassau. 🙂