Okay, so here we go. I am Kate, my husband is John, I'm mid-fifty and John is 62. Because we wanted to save all our money for the cruise itself, on Saturday morning we loaded up a cooler with sandwiches and salad and started the 4 1/2 hour drive for Tampa from St. Augustine on Saturday. We spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Rocky Port, perfectly adequate, nothing fancy. A park-and-sale package, although our spots on the shuttle were for noon on Sunday which was much later than we wanted to go. The cost of the park-and-sale and the night in the hotel was almost exactly the same cost of parking in the garage at port, so it seemed like a no-brainer to us. We ate our picnic in the room with a couple of beers, took a walk, watched a movie and settled in for a good night's sleep before the cruise. After a fairly decent continental breakfast we had another short walk and went back to the room and read our kindles until time to go down for the shuttle. Then it was finally time to go.

We arrived at the Tampa Port Authority around 12:45 and the line was out of the building and down the street a bit. Dang. Although the line was long and it took almost an hour and a half before we were actually on the ship, the line never stopped steadily moving so it wasn't that terrible. As we walked the gangway, I mentally threw all my problems off behind me and stepped onto the ship as happy as can be. Our room was ready (one small advantage of arriving to the port so late) so we dumped off our stuff and headed up to Lido for lunch. We were in 4210 - an unobstructed balcony, aft, conveniently near the aft set of elevators. It was a fine room, clean, not noisy at all, and a comfortable home for our week. Muster drill was painless, then we wandered the ship a bit. All of our baggage arrived by 4:00 and we unpacked and reveled in the delight of the week stretching in front of us. We had to see the ship cross under the bridge (around 6:30) so we went up to the sky deck to see. It is amazing. A policemen stood in the middle of the bridge and waved to us. Many people were up there watching, some more comfortable than others. It was neat and something not to be missed.

The sea days blur together a bit, so I'm going to tell you about sea days for us in one fell swoop. I always awoke around six, went up and got two coffees and went out on the balcony to read my kindle, sip my coffee, and watch the sun rise. At seven, I'd wake my husband up and after quick showers we'd eat breakfast and walk around the upper decks for a bit. We didn't do any of the planned activities - we most read on the balcony, ate, walked around people watching, ate some more, drank, drank some more. Very relaxed and happy. Read more