Cruise Day 2

After a restful night at the hotel, we woke up and had a pretty good breakfast from the hotel (except the eggs were cold).  We had arranged the hotel to take us to the port and met a nice family from Kentucky on the shuttle ride over.  Once we got there, we had a porter take our bags and we stood in line.  I kept having thoughts of Ellis Island go through my head as we stood in the many lines and waited for our turn.  I thought our trip was pretty comparable at the moment except our ship had mini golf on it and I'm pretty sure those going into Ellis Island did not.  Once we got on the ship, we were told we had some time before we could go into our cabin so we explored the ship and had lunch at the buffet on the lido deck.  We eventually got into our room and dropped our backpacks off.  We went up top to watch the ship leave port.

We had a muster drill to make sure we'd all know what to do if there was a problem.  Throughout the whole thing people kept mentioning the Titanic especially when the words "plenty of lifeboats" and "unsinkable" kept being used.  We overhead a few conversations as well.  In fact, there was a family that brought their teenagers not only that, but they let them bring friends along.  I could understand letting your child bring a friend on like a camping trip or maybe even a road trip but cruises are not cheap.  To make it even better, the friend the fifteen-year-old boy chose to bring along was his girlfriend.

The first day on the boat was mostly exploring, but we did manage to get a free piece of art for pre-registering for an art auction and a free charm to go on a charm bracelet (nothing too fancy though).  The ship had a few things planned to keep us entertained including a game show with contestants from the audience.  I should have gone up because I knew pretty much all of the answers.  One of the helpers that we briefly saw during the game show and then multiple times throughout the cruise looked an awful lot like our friend, Jake.  We were a little surprised.  Now I've found a Chinese doppelganger of one friend and a British doppelganger for Jake.

That night we had dinner in the dining room and sat by a nice couple.  I had a steak which was ok, but not my favorite.  Afterwards we went outside to check things out and noticed a few stars, we tried to see more but the ship was too bright.  From our viewpoint, we decided it would be a good idea to never be lost at sea.  Since we couldn't find the stars, we found the ice cream machine instead.

That night, the first show onboard  was a welcome show.  It was ok, a bit random but ok.  At the beginning, the host and cruise director, Kirk, gave a shout out to all the servicemen and women and veterans in the audience and had them stand to be recognized.  He also had any firefighters and policemen and women stand.  The last group he had recognized were teachers and educators.  I have to say that was a first for me.  Throughout the week, I had a lot of opportunities to talk to people from all over the country and world about education and it was interesting to hear their comments as they were all good and supportive which is not what I get from a lot of parents.

We decided not to go to the comedy show for adults so we went back to our room and found our first towel critter waiting for us on one of the beds.  We easily recognized it as a dog, others were not so easily recognized.