this is our 3rd cruise, our 2nd time in the caribbean, and the 1st time with friends.
we took the red eye flight from SFO to FLL on Friday night. traveling to the east coast is easy - the flight is a 'short' 4.5 hours but since it's a red eye flight, that means less time to try and get some sleep before the cruise. michelle slept throughout the flight and was knocked out even before the plane took off. don't even ask me how much sleep i got.
we arrived in fort lauderdale at around 7 am and checked our bags with a company called, Bags to Go. they took our bags ($6 for each bag) and the next time we saw them was in our cabin on the cruise ship. i highly suggest doing this if you arrive early before your cruise vacation. we went to Denny's for some breakfast and then we took the trolly to see parts of the city. at around 11 am, we went to the cruise terminal to check in.
waiting for the trolley in fort lauderdale
in all 3 cruises, checking in has always been an easy process. imagine the logistics they had to prepare in order to smoothly and quickly check-in all 2,000 passengers for a ship...it's quite a feat. it did involve walking...a whole lot of walking. in order to avoid 2,000 people piling up on each other, everything was spread out across multiple levels and wide floor space. from the time we got into the terminal door and in to our cabins...it probably took no more than 20 minutes and that includes taking the 'obligatory' picture before you enter the ship.
just girls
i find the caribbean sea to be a lot more motion-sickness inducing. i got a few bad headaches during this trip. chel battled nausea and lost the battle several times. i have to remind myself to get a scopolamine patch before we cruise again...yes, we're already sort of planning our next cruise vacation with friends and family...2013, to alaska!
each night, michelle looks forward to the towel animals that the house keeping team puts together. one night, i wasn't feeling too well so i refused the turn down service, but i requested for the towel animals so michelle won't be disappointed when she goes back to the room.
michelle is old enough to go to the kids area during the trip called Club HAL. they have a full program to keep the kids occupied during the trip (it's like free baby sitting!). i was looking forward to this, but of course, my daughter does not want to spend time there and chose to stay with the adults the entire time. she was there for 1 event, for 1.5 hours, and that was it. oh well! the good thing about michelle is that she is very well adjusted and can hang out with the adults with no problems. she became very attached to her tito rj. buti mabait si tito rj. =D
best buds on the trip
our cabin was nice and small...all cabins are small but very very efficient. we even had a bath tub in our bathroom. service is always excellent. food was good. we sailed on the Eurodam which is the largest Holland America Ship (capacity of a little over 2,000 passengers) but considered mid-sized by industry standards. royal caribbean has two giant ships sailing right now, both can accomodate 5,000 passengers. one of them, the allure of the seas (royal caribbean) was docked at st. thomas at the same time we were..our ship had 19 kids on board, the allure had 1,900 kids on board. it was probably a lot more quiet on our ship than theirs. =)
any way, more cruise blog to come shortly!
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