Day 4 -- February 5, 2015

Day 4 – February 5, 2015

At last, we’ve arrived at the day that we’ve planned for for months – the day that we leave on a cruise, bound for Cozumel, Mexico! It’s a very short cruise (leaving February 5 and returning on February 9), and the vast majority of our time will just be sailing. We’ll have the day in Cozumel on Saturday. That’s fine with us, though, because we’re just looking forward to being on a cruise. We’ve been on board for about three hours (still docked), and already I’ve discovered that some folks must come for other reasons, like trying to see how loud they can be. I just think that they came for a good time!

We’ve already had one meal on board . . . lunch. Oh, my goodness, we had about four or five different venues that we could choose from – burgers, Mexican food, country, Asian, and I’ve probably missed something. We ate at the country buffet, and it was delicious. I checked out the desserts for cookies, but the only ones that they had were obviously “store bought.” So I skipped that part, and that’s a good thing.

I know I’ll write more about today later, but for right now, I wanted to get a note off and the photos that we took while we were waiting to board. I see lots of fun and too much good food ahead for the Youngs and Robbinses!

At 4:00, we had to go to our muster station. I always dread this part of a cruise I guess because I don’t like to think about having to use the life jackets and board lifeboats. This “drill” was a little different from others, though. We didn’t have to practice putting the life jackets on; a sweet young thing just demonstrated for us. That was nice, but we wound up just standing at the station for about thirty minutes in silence and behind the white line. Since I’m a rules person, I wanted to see everyone obey. There were some young people right down the line from us who took great delight in talking and in seeing how far outside the line they could get. I sent the old English teacher look down their way, but they didn’t notice. I doubt that it would have made any difference.

After the muster station routine, we went up on Deck 9 to watch our departure. I was disappointed that there weren’t folks standing on the dock shouting, “Bon Voyage!” HaHa! We spent the rest of our afternoon before dinner in our room, checking out the TV stations. We’ve never been on a cruise where the rooms have TVs. Really fancy for the Youngs!

For some reason, Claudia and Ivan had assigned seating and times for dinner, but we had open seating. We managed to get all of us in open seating so that we could eat together. The dinner was delicious. Frank and I had shrimp cocktails for starters; Claudia and Ivan, smoked duck. For the main course, Ivan had brisket; Claudia and I, lasagna; and Frank, fried chicken. Frank’s chicken proved not to be good, and he lost it during the night. TMI, huh? For dessert, Ivan and Frank had molten chocolate cake with ice cream; Claudia, cheesecake; and I, pineapple sherbet. I’m determined not to eat too many goopy desserts on this cruise. We’ll see how long that determination lasts!

Our dinner time was 6:00, and at 7:20, we realized that we were almost late for the Welcome to the Ship Party, which would begin at 7:30. We made it in time. I wasn’t overly impressed with it. Good singing and dancing but nothing spectacular. The Cruise Director was in charge. He was good at his job and funny most of the time. I thought Frank and I were going to be recognized as the couple married the longest, but a man and lady named Al and Judy beat us with 57 years to our 53. Al went down to the stage to give advice to the man (Alex) who was the newest married. And what was this advice? Always say, “as you wish”! Pretty good advice, I think! I imagine Alex’s bride agreed.

The last thing we did was visit one of the stores on Deck 5 so that I could purchase hair spray. Yes, I still use hair spray, and the can that I brought with me suddenly quit working. We were in bed early again in anticipation of a fun day at sea on Friday!