{"id":801,"date":"2010-09-25T21:36:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T01:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=801"},"modified":"2010-09-25T21:36:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T01:36:16","slug":"cruise-notes-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/25\/cruise-notes-day-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Notes, Day One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CIMG0013\"<\/a>We got to the airport a bit too early, but that was okay.\u00a0 The shuttle took us to the Port of Baltimore without a hitch and we were among some of the first to board Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas.\u00a0 We were scheduled to go to Bermuda, but due to Hurricane Igor, we were re-routed to Nassau in the Bahamas, and we were given a significant shipboard credit to make up for the inconvienience.\u00a0 Oh pity us… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

It’s been a little over 25 years since I’d been on a cruise,\u00a0 and when I went, Daddy had handled all the details.\u00a0 I was a bit nervous about making sure we’d gotten all the paperwork done, and everything arranged properly.\u00a0 It was, so getting on board was no problem.\u00a0 We walked up the gangway and I was so excited I about cried.\u00a0 Have I mentioned I love cruises?<\/p>\n

We had to wait to go to our staterooms,\u00a0which makes sense, since it had probably been less than three hours since someone else was in them.\u00a0So we went to the Windjammer Cafe,\u00a0the ships buffet-style dining area,\u00a0for lunch.\u00a0 The food was better than you usually get on a buffet, but that’s pretty much par for the course on a cruise.<\/p>\n

After that we kind of hit the wall and went to our stateroom for a nap.\u00a0\u00a0Since we’d gotten up at four in the morning, this\u00a0proved to be a good idea.<\/p>\n

When we got up, of course we had a pre-embarkation lifeboat drill.\u00a0 This is not actually a joke, and they’ll hustle you to your assigned lifeboat station if\u00a0 you don’t go. I heard a lot of snark about how women and children first was no longer in effect from fellow passengers.\u00a0 (It’s not about equal rights, you nitwits.\u00a0 It’s about survival of the species… Jesus!)\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of people wandered off after some instructions but before the Captain dismissed them.\u00a0 That got under my fingernails, even though I know a cruise ship isn’t exactly military discipline.\u00a0 It made me feel a little cold to realize that in a real emergency, some people would have gotten some harsh lessons damn fast.<\/p>\n

Then we watched the ship set sail.\u00a0 The Enchantment of the Seas<\/em> is about the usual size these days for a cruise ship, which means less than a meter of clearance under the Key Bridge.\u00a0\u00a0I found out later that the Captain finds sailing out of Baltimore an irritation because of that.\u00a0 (No KIDDING.\u00a0 Makes a ship even more a slave to tides than usual).<\/p>\n

First afternoon was pool and Jacuzzi.\u00a0\u00a0 The Enchantment of the Seas<\/em> has a solarium where young kids aren’t allowed (not that there were many on this cruise), and was a great place to relax, hang out and watch the Chesapeake go by as we headed to the atlantic.<\/p>\n

We had dinner at the late seating, and oddly enough were the only people at our table the whole cruise.\u00a0 While this didn’t exactly destroy our fun, I was mildly disappointed as a lot of the fun of a cruise is getting to know other people.\u00a0 We had a great dinner.\u00a0 I had watermelon gazpacho (which I’d never tried before)\u00a0and sea bass.\u00a0 Peter had a shrimp appetizer with quesadillas.\u00a0 I adore the hand and foot service you get on a cruise, but it’s especially nice in the dining room, and we had a fantastic waiter.\u00a0 We went to bed right after dinner because we were dead on our feet.\u00a0 Because of Hurricane Igor, the seas had quite\u00a0signifcant\u00a0swells\u00a0(2.5-3 meters), but it felt like we were being rocked to sleep.<\/p>\n

Have I mentioned I love being at sea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We got to the airport a bit too early, but that was okay.\u00a0 The shuttle took us to the Port of Baltimore without a hitch and we were among some of the first to board Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas.\u00a0 We were scheduled to go to Bermuda, but due to Hurricane Igor, we were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cruise Notes, Day One”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-2010"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}