Day 1 of cruise, Part 3 (of 3) - Our cabin, sail away, steakhouse dinner, show, rest of day

Darn, wrote the post and had it nearly done and then poof, it was gone. Don't you hate when that happens?

Byron got right down to relaxing!

Ok, cabin post part 2.

Where was I... oh yes, we were heading to the cabin.  Our wonderful travel agent/friend Cheryl had surprised us with anniversary decorations.

We unpacked our carry ons, looked at our balcony and over the side to the luggage being loaded:

Our luggage hadn't arrived yet, so we wandered about the ship.  In our wanderings we went to the atrium lobby area, the Promenade where Byron signed up to attend a free champagne art auction the next day (and guessed at the price of a work of art).  We encountered a someone from the steakhouse and confirmed our reservations for that evening.  We also found ourselves up on Deck 11 and toured the spa.  They have a variety of treatments/services, a wonderful workout area/gym, sauna, showers, and friendly staff. The gym and sauna are free. The spa services have fees.

At some point before sail away our strawberries frome Cheryl arrived? They were as delicious as they were pretty!


After wandering about on decks 11, 10, 9, 5 and 3 we went back to our room and lo and behold, our luggage had arrived.  We unpacked and headed to "muster" aka safety drill. We listened to safety instructions and then headed up to Lido "Sail Away."  Oh, we also got our "bottomless bubbles" stickers which meant that we could then have free soda/juice in the main dining room and bar areas.  A handy thing to have! Once up on Lido we listened to the music, watched the antics of the DJ Double ii and then the entertainment staff was introduced to much applause.  We had Cruise Director Troy Lipton, Assistant Cruise Director Adam, Graham was another entertainment staff and then the dancers (who also had  many duties helping with guests in addition to dancing in the shows).

Ends up departure (5 pm) was delayed for one reason or another and we ended up going back to the cabin about 5:30  to rest and hang out before getting ready/dressed up for our first dinner on ship, the Steakhouse. We had 7:15 reservations.

The steakhouse was everything that I'd heard it was and more. Byron is a cook for a living and has worked in a seafood/steakhouse and in other nice restaurants and currently works in a small-ish hotel here in town doing banquet work.  He was *very* impressed with the steakhouse.  We had appetizers, Caesar salad, the bread (rosemary foccacia was so amazing I could have sworn I heard angels singing when we ate it).  I had filet mignon and Byron had the double cut lamb chops.  I had some creamed spinach as a side and a potato.  For dessert we had homemade fresh raspberry sorbet which was beyond divine and we finished with coffee.  This restaurant has a flat rate $35 fee and was very well worth it.  On land this dinner would cost over $100 each and be worth that.  Also, on the first night on board the dinner comes with a complimentary bottle of red or white wine. We chose the red.

After this amazing repast, which took a couple of hours, we went to the 10:30 show which was a "Welcome Aboard" show, it was entertaining and fun. We also observed a game of bingo before that. We didn't play, the steakhouse was our "splurge" and we felt bingo was overpriced and didn't play at all during the cruise ($25 per game, for 3 cards).

After the show and a very long day we were wandering the promenade for a bit and along came a "fun crawl" - Cruise Director Troy was taking people (maybe 100) on a tour of various fun spots on the promenade and I joined in the fun while Byron watched some poker in the casino.

We listened to the band by the casino for a bit and the "fun crawl" peeps had a "twist" competition, that was fun to watch.  The gentleman who won was likely old enough to remember the twist from the first go round! Let's hear one for the Baby-Boomers!  Then it was off to the piano bar where everyone sang a rousing chorus of "Ob La Di, Ob La Da" and something else, a quick glance at the Alchemy bar and we paraded into the night club where we were given glow sticks.  I don't like the style of music they had in there and I certainly don't dance to it, but I *can* manage to "count the beat" when I'm not liking something much, so I stood off to the side and "conducted" the dances 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, with my glow stick.  I haven't substitute taught middle school music for nothing .  After the night club the tour was over.  I collected Byron from watching Poker and we headed to bed and our first sleep at sea.