Don't you love my titles.....so creative!
We had continental breakfast
and checked out of the La Quinta.
Here is Joe loading the car. We were out of town for a very long time.......so it required lots of luggage. I thought I did pretty good packing us in 3 large rolling suite cases, our 2 carry on bags, and a hanging bag.
Here we are driving to the cruise terminal parking deck.
Waiting in line. We left early this time, so it would not take us as long to get on the boat.
We ended up waiting anyway because the last cruise guests debarked late.
We got on the boat about 1:00 p.m. We didn't have to wait too long. This is the cruise terminal.
Joe getting on the boat.
Our room wasn't ready yet, so we decided to grab some lunch.
Joe eating his burger and fries.
It was a cloudy, misty day so not too many people were outside.
We soon made it to our room and this was our view from our balcony.
Here is a tour of our room. It is really not this pink. I don't know why the picture turned out this way. I tried taking them a few times. Oh well.......I am definitely not a photographer! This is our room from the hallway door. The door to the left is the tiny bathroom. The door to the right are the closets. The door straight ahead is the door to the balcony.
This is the bathroom. Again.....I promise it is not that pink!
Here is the shower.
This picture is much better.
The vanity.......I loved having this area to get ready!
We had a love seat and
A king sized bed. That Vera Bradley bag on the love seat was the best purchase I made before we left. It is called "Get Carried Away" and is the best carry on bag I've ever had! Two beach towels and all of our stuff fit in it great when we went to the beach! It even has a zipper and pockets on the inside and the outside. It will be a great bag to take on the boat this summer. I saw many other girls with these bags on the cruise.
Our balcony. I will never stay in a room without a balcony again!!
Joe sitting on the balcony. We had 2 chairs and a little table. It was great!
Us pulling away from the cruise terminal. We left New Orleans at 4:00 p.m.
This is the view from the balcony.
We cruised down the Mississippi for 8 hours before we entered the Gulf. I enjoyed cruising in the Gulf in Galveston much better. The river is just not very pretty.......I prefer blue water to brown!
Leaving New Orleans.
We ate dinner at 6:00 p.m. every night. We sat at a 2 person table in the London Dining Room.
Table number 342.
This was our view at dinner.
Joe's dinner. Not sure what it was, but he loved it. That is one of his favorite things about the cruise........trying new foods that he has never tried before. He had all kinds of seafood, caviar, different kinds of sushi, lamb, veil, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something.
Not me! I stuck to the basics. I had linguine with marinara and Italian sausage. It was great!
Us at dinner our first night. This nice couple sitting across from us took our picture every night. We spent so much money on buying the professional pictures last time. Joe gets so embarrassed when I ask random people to take our picture, so I told him he was going to have to get over that for this trip because I did not want to have to buy all of those pictures again! He did pretty well! ha.
Another thing Joe really likes about dinner is that they have a different sugar free dessert every night. This was orange cake and vanilla ice cream.
I had Creme Brule with fresh berries........it was not sugar free! It was great!
They had an ice cream parlor.......
and a cake shop on the ship. I thought that was pretty neat.
Guess who Joe and I ran into on the ship......Preston Tye. Preston was one of my great friends in elementary, junior high, and high school. We haven't seen each other in a few years, and it was great to see him! It was crazy......because there are over 3000 people on the ship.........and we ran into each other the first night.............and sometime every day we were there. It was crazy!
Then we went to the sushi bar......well, Joe did.
He loved it!
When we got back to our room, our room steward, Enrico, had already cleaned our room. He made this walrus towel animal for us. He cleaned our room twice a day.....everyday. He was so nice! He came an introduced himself after we hadn't been in our room long. He was great all week!
The first night, we walked around the boat and found where every thing was, and sat out on our balcony for a while. The paper in the picture above is the Carnival Capers that lists all of the activities on the ship for the next day. So, we read it and planned what we wanted to do the next day. You can also book shore excursions for while you are in the ports of call on your television. So we booked a snorkeling trip for Key West.
You can also purchase a soda card that will be good for all week. Iced tea and lemonade are avaliable at lunch and dinner, and orange juice and apple juice are avaliable at breakfast, but sodas have to be purchased indidvidually at the many bars on the ship. Joe drinks many diet sodas a day, so it was well worth it to spend $40.00 on a soda card so he could get unlimited sodas all week. I think they are $3.00 a piece.........for a small glass with ice and soda.......not even 16 ounces.
When we got back to our room, we noticed it was kind of warm in our room so we slept with the balcony door open. More on that later......
It was a great first day!
Rae
