I did a final pack of our luggage and placed them inside our
room near the door around 8:50am. They
came around 10am to pick up our luggage.
We checked out around 11am and waited for the Princess rep. I did go into one of the conference rooms to
see if our luggage was there. One of the
hotel employees marked our bags with orange dots. I found the Princess rep and she checked off
our names. We filled out the health form
and waited for our bus to arrive. We left
the ES and headed out to the Terminal after 12 noon and arrived 15 minutes
later.
We had an issue with the Princess transfer at this
point. As we arrived at the terminal, we
were told that we had to again identify our luggage and give them to the
porter. Half of our group’s luggage was
not on the bus with us, including ours.
We waited and waited. Twenty
minutes or so later, another Cabana bus arrived. It was total chaos. I retrieved our two pieces of luggage and
gave the nice porter a tip. This process
at the terminal was not a good way to start our cruise.
We headed towards the terminal and Hubby pulled me towards
the Princess Preferred entrance. Once inside we were greeted with a line to get
through security. The next stop was the
Princess Preferred desk to have our passport checked and scanned and to receive
our cruise cards. We walked up and out
of the terminal and proceeded to enter the ship. A princess security crew took my card and
scanned it into a handheld device. Then
he took a picture of me from the same device.
Now, we were officially on the cruise!
We were on the ship before 1pm!
We immediately found our room, on the port side and
forward. We were in a mini-suite. This is the first time that we were that
forward on the ship. We were also one
door down from the forward exit area.
The exit area contained the elevators and the stairs. I was not too sure about this location when
we booked it. So far, the noise and chatter
from that area had been minimal. We
hardly heard the elevator ping-type tone.
The only thing we would hear was the door shutting from our
neighbors.
We grabbed some lunch in the Caribe Café. The Horizon Buffet area was crowded with long
lines. Apparently, not too many people
know about Caribe and we walked right through.
I dropped hubby off at our room. I went downstairs to the Internet Café to
find instructions on how to login to the ship’s Internet. I also stopped by the International Café to
grab some peanut butter cookies and also a fresh out of the oven chocolate chip
cookie. Yummy!
From my laptop, I was able to connect to the Internet and
setup my login account. I also setup Hubby’s
account as well. This was one important task
to take care of. I’m not sure if we got
any additional free minutes by signing up on the first day. We each received 250 minutes for free and the
$3.50 service fee was waived. I had
visited the Internet Café again to find out if the 250 free minutes was for the
first week of the cruise or for the two whole weeks. The Internet Manager apparently did not
understand my question and told me it was good for the whole cruise. We’ll see what happens.
Our muster drill was scheduled at 3:30pm. We heard the 7 short and one long over the
intercom. We grabbed our life vests and
headed down to the Princess Theater for our muster talk and life vest
demo. Captain Nash spoke to us about the
importance of this muster drill and also mentioned about the Costa
accident. Twenty minutes later practiced
putting on our life vest and took it off.
We headed back to our cabin for the sail-a-way.
Henry was our room steward.
I was a bit confused as the card on our desk had the name Luis. Henry didn’t show up until after our muster
drill. L A few minutes later, he arrived with our
champagne. J It was a few minutes past 4pm and we watched
the Grand Princess sail out of the port.
She is a beautiful ship, especially after going through the extensive
dry dock upgrades. We were next to leave
port. I was using my iPhone and on FB
posting pictures and comments as we sailed out of the port. I was still on it after 5pm. At 5:18pm, I lost my 3Gs connection on my
iPhone. Still impressive while several
miles out at sea! I quickly changed my
iPhone to “airplane mode” for the rest of the cruise.
I took lots of sail away pictures. The sun was setting behind us and the views
were awesome.
The ship started to rock and roll. Yeah!!!
I was unpacking hubby’s suitcase (on the floor). Several times, I almost landed inside his
suitcase! Hubby was laughing at me at my
antics. I’m glad I could provide some
entertainment for him. J
An hour later and two suitcases put under our bed, I tried
to sit down and chill. I couldn’t. I’m feeling antsy.
Henry comes by around 6:30pm and we decided to leave our
cabin so he could turn down our bed for the evening. We were undecided what to do for dinner. We were still wearing the clothes we came
onboard. We agreed that something light
would be appropriate especially after having a buffet lunch. We headed down to the Wine Bar for some wine
and free sushi. Hubby had his white wine
(Pinot Gris), while I had my red (future health benefit) Pinot Noir. We ordered the sushi combination: seaweed roll, ahi tuna, white tail fish, and
some other white fish, spicy ginger, and wasabi. It was all good!
It was still chilly up in the open decks as I was heading to
a bar to get a huge bottle of water. I
was also looking for popcorn, but didn’t see any. I assume it was the football game that was
showing on MUTS and/or the lack of people in attendance. Yes, it was quite chilly to be lounging in
the chairs outside. The Trident Grill
was quiet as well as the ice cream station and the pizza place. This was 8pm!
The cooks looked a bit lonely.
By 9pm I was ready to hit the sack, but ended up going to
sleep an hour later. My eyelids were
quite heavy. Zzzzzzzzz.
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