Day 2: Boarding the Boat

Seeing as how our bodies didn't quite know what time zone we were in yet, everyone seemed to wake up around their normal time the second day....which translated to EXTREMELY early Seattle time. So whats a person to do when your wide awake and clock reads 3:30.....Well, unless your name rhymes with Bill, you go back to bed.

Once awake we meet up with rest of the extended Taylor family from Michigan that took the late night flight into Seattle the day before. This meant a second visit to the Space Needle and Pike's Market. But we all enjoyed visiting them again...unless you count the walking. We didn't enjoy that. Especially when it was uphill.



Finally the time had come. We were ready to hop a shuttle to the port and board the boat!

The boarding process was fairly painless. Stand in line, sign some papers, stand in line, go through metal detector, stand in line, get on boat, stand in line, walk to room, collapse on bed. Ok, so maybe we didn't collapse on the bed, but our bags did.

We checked out our room(s) first, which were two mini-suits that we shared between 7 people. The rooms included a "queen" bed, which could be converted to two small twin beds, a pull-out sofa bed, and a hidden bunk bed in the ceiling. Unlike most cruise rooms, out bathroom featured a full bathtub, which we were excited about because a week of showering in a closet quickly becomes old. We also received an added bonus with our balcony. Not only could share the balconies between the two rooms, but since we were at the end of the ship our balcony had a little extra section tacked on to side, making it more like having a one and a half balcony.


From there we went our to explore the rest of the ship before participating in the required muster drill. We checked out the 3 theaters, 4 heated pools, assorted hot tubs, and the ever important...buffet. 24-hour buffet to be exact. However I don't think we ever visited it much after 10. But at least we knew we could.

Next the muster drill....where we heard "Muster Station D" from a British crew member. So try saying "muster station D" in your best British accent. It's ok, I know you tried it. Now try saying it 10 times fast with out laughing. Yeah, we couldn't do it either.

After the ship set sail, we admired Seattle from the top deck, then proceeded to head down to dinner and later the welcome aboard show. After the show, we found a place to relax and decided to get a bucket of beers to split amongst the eligible drinkers of the group. Now I say split because they were charging $4.75 for a single bottle of Bud Light, $5.something for anything premium. (Funny, didn't think we were at a concert. Of course we were floating in middle of a large body of water, so its not like we had too many choices.) Good news was if you get a bucket, you get 5 for the price of 4 to help ease the blow a little.

Our first day on the ship ended with some cookies from room service....since most of room service was included!