Day 1 of Cruise - March 23, 2013 - Embarkation onto Carnival Liberty

Today is the day we board the ship!  We get up about 8, it's a bright sunny day.  We get ready and head down to breakfast.  Breakfast is nice. A selection of pastries, pancakes, fruit, yogurt, cereal, assorted juice, coffee, tea, etc.   Settling in at a table, we strike up a conversation with a couple near us.  They are going on our same ship and we end up running into them every other day or so.

The hotel has contracts with a shuttle service to take cruisers to the airport, it's $12.00 per person and was going to arrive at 12:30 and be full of dozens of people and get to the ship/on board about 2 or so after loading/unloading everyone's luggage.  I know we can be on board much earlier and easier by using a cab and the cost difference is minimal.  We head up to the room, collect our bags and have the hotel call us a cab about 10:15. The cab comes in a few minutes and we get in and head to the Port of Miami to board the Carnival Liberty.

On our way to the port we hit a small snag, but it's worse for the cab driver. There we are, driving down the freeway and BAM the hood flies up, smashes the windshield and splinters it. The cabby stays in full control of the car and pulls us off to the left.  Less than a minute later a police officer comes alongside, stops traffic and leads us to the right side of the road, on the exit median.  The officer then heads off about his business.  The cab driver calls us another cab and starts planning on getting his car repaired. We get out of the cab and look to see what might have gone wrong. Ends up the bolts/a bolt holding the hood down had sheared off, causing the hood to fly up. I hope the driver got it fixed soon so he could go back on the road/work. We pay the first driver for this leg of the journey and await our second cab.

We get into the second cab and make an uneventful trip to the port. We pay the second driver, give our bags to the porter, tipping him and make our away to the Carnival terminal entrance.

Next we head into the terminal, show my passport, Byron's birth certificate and ID and head to check in.  We have priority check in, so nice!  Next thing we know we're heading to get our Sail & Sign cards, head to board, have our embarkation picture taken and we're on board!!!!

I'll put the rest in another post this one is getting long.