Embarkation Day
We are scheduled to take the Port Shuttle at 12:30 PM so we don’t have to rush this morning. Checkout is 12 Noon so the timing is perfect.
The breakfast again was very good – French Toast instead of pancakes today. I had the oatmeal, French Toast, and a mini-donut. All good.
We are all packed (actually, we didn’t unpack much) so the morning is spent getting this log up to date and posting some older logs.
At 11:45 AM, we went down to the lobby and were surprised to hear that the shuttle was leaving early for the port. We hopped on for the short ride and got off at the Celebrity Terminal. We tagged our bags and went through security. This time out, we were told to go to a special room for Guest Entertainers, where we got our Sea Pass Cards and registered our charge card. We got our pictures taken at the security kiosk on the ship and boarded. Very easy.
We took our champagne up to the Oceanview Café on Deck 14 and had lunch – very good pizza and salad (and dressings that tasted like their names).
We dropped our bags in our room – 3519 behind the door. I had a letter waiting for me from the Entertainment Manager, Kristine Gacula, indicating that she wanted to meet at 6:45 PM in the Entertainment Court (outside Celebrity Central).
We found out from Shorex that this ship doesn’t have escorts – bummer.
The person manning the computer at the Moonlight Sonata Dining Room re-explained the Select Dining (anytime) Dining option for us. We made “reservations” for 5:45 PM for tonight and 6:00 PM for tomorrow. You just come around 5:30 PM and you can get seated.
We went to the lifeboat drill at 3:00 PM in the Eclipse Theater.
The Captain on this cruise is Leonardos Palaiokrassas and the Cruise Director is Eddy Jenkins. The drill was different in that they showed a James Bond type mini-movie describing the safety issues on the ship. Different. Don’t know how effective the movie was. I thought it was more entertaining than informative.
We met out stateroom attendant, Yulia (from Ukraine), who seemed very nice. A few minutes later, Yulia brought us our checked bags so no logoware on this cruise.
We went out on the open deck to check out the lounge chairs – they are the collapsing kind but they will do when combined with feet on the glass railing.
Miami from Eclipse
We changed for dinner and went to the Moonlight Sonata Dining Room at 5:30 PM and were seated immediately at a table for two. We both had the mushroom soup and seared salmon and they were both delicious. Guava sorbet for dessert and we were done. A great first dinner on board.
I met with Kristine about my program – I will be doing a talk on each of the sea days with tomorrow’s session scheduled at Noon in Celebrity Central. We taped a brief description of my talks and I think it came off OK.
The video is generic and will be played throughout the cruise to remind folks of the series. I am the only speaker on board on this cruise. We have never sailed with Kristine or Eddy previously but it has been a while.
We went up on deck to catch the “scenic” sail away.
The Welcome Aboard Show – “Hard Day’s Night”, features a Beatle’s Tribute band . They were pretty good and the guy posing as George Harrison was scary similar to the late great George. The audience was really into the performance.
Hard Day’s Night
From there, it was off to the Ensemble Lounge to hear the musical acts – first up was a James Taylor type singer, Michael Redden (“Slow Jam” music), followed by a duo from Eastern Europe, Passion Duo (vocalist and guitar). They were both entertaining and muted enough not to cause sensory overload.
Passion Duo
Next stop our room to get some rest – hope springs eternal that it will be a quiet room.
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