Day 1 - Caribbean Princess (Part 2)

We are hungry.  Again?!  Yes, but we had a light breakfast, remember?  We head up to Horizon Court for lunch.  They have a decent selection of food.  We know not to fill our plates.  I pick up a piece of fish, some potatoes (carbs!), spicy wings, cooked carrots (yeah team!), and some fried rice.  We find a table for 4 in the back of the ship hoping that D and M will catch up with us.  We finish our plates and since Princess has been nice enough to leave placards on the table telling us “to leave the table when we’re done eating so that others may use the table".  That was my cue to get up and get another plate of something.  Two more wings?  Sure.  How about a slice of pineapple? Way cool.  Is that a chocolate chip cookie that jumped onto my plate?  No problem.

By this time, D and M join us at the table.  It so nice to see first time Princess cruisers eat hearty.  Remember, it will take another few days before the novelty will wear off and normal eating habits will resume.  For Hubby and me, that will be the first two days and we’ll be back to normal.  Each person is different will have various adverse reactions to all the food displayed/presented.

After lunch we go our separate ways.  I know D and M will go exploring and will continue exploring for the next several days.  Hubby and I head across the ship to check out the gym.  The gym will be my third home for the duration of the cruise.  I have done so well to get my metabolism back (after all these years) that I don’t want to get off the bandwagon.  There’s enough machines to keep me active.  I just need to figure out when it’s not too busy.  Normally the first few days the gym will be packed.  Once we have our first port stop, people seem to stop going afterwards.

As we walk down the hallway that leads to our cabin, we see our three pieces of luggage sitting outside our door.  It takes us about 40 minutes to unpack “everything” and place things in their proper locations.

During our unpacking adventure our cabin steward, Sandy, arrives to greet us and to see how we are doing.  He gives me the health briefing that contains information on frequent hand washing and preventing norovirus and also information on Zika.  On his second trip back to our cabin, Sandy provides us with welcome aboard libations.  Around mid-afternoon we get the announcement that Muster will take place at 3:30pm.  We wait for the signal and grab our life vests in the closet and head down to the Princess Theater.  A princess rep is there to greet us and scans our cards.  If anyone misses this muster session, they will have to go to a make up one which is held during sailaway.  This event takes about 15 minutes and we’re back in our cabin storing our vests in our closet.

We are the first ship out of the four in port to set sail around 4pm.  The folks who live on the waterfront condos are waving and in response the Captain of the Caribbean Princess is blowing the ship’s horn which is music to my ears.  Sure enough Hubby is imitating the “Love Boat” theme that we heard on the Regal Princess last year.



Can you see the large hand waving at us?  Enjoy sailing out of Port Everglades.


  


Many of the boats and sailing vessels that go by wave to us:



Including this fishing boat:



As we head out to sea, we notice the water is a bit rough and so the ships is rolling a bit.  Too cool!  This rolling and swaying continues into the night.

Hubby and I venture out for the evening.  We have an invitation to the Platinum and Elite Lounge at 5pm (every night during our cruise) where we can dine on light fare and $5 libations.  Tonight is guacamole and chips along with three different cheese, crackers, olives, and a veggie platter:



Enjoyed seeing the fruit carvings.  Princess has really improved in the setup of this PEL event.  It’s normally held in Skywalker’s (the top of the shopping bag handle…back of the ship), but tonight it was held in Club Fusion on deck 7.  This light fare or appetizers was the first part of our dinner.   Our next stop was to the upper deck to watch football:  Seahawks and Falcons.