South Pointe Beach ….

....  Miami.

Since we don’t have to be at the port until this afternoon we were able to spend a little more time with my mom and sister (Nancy) before they left for the Keys.  We met at small café for breakfast that’s on the ground floor of the hotel.  We were later joined by my other sister (Bev), her husband (Harvey), her daughter (my niece, Caroline) and Caroline’s best friend (Jess) who is joining us on the cruise.

Pretty soon it was time to say our “see you laters” to my mom and Nancy and head out to the port of Miami to board our ship.  We are sailing with Royal Caribbean aboard the largest cruise liner ever built …. The Symphony of the Seas!  Why my niece (Rachel) picked the biggest ocean liner ever is beyond me! I was hoping that for our first cruise it would be something a little more intimate!  Oh well!

Bev and Harvey had a rental car so we hitched a ride with them to the port.  I was overwhelmed by everything when we got there!  But the check-in went fairly smoothly and we were soon on board! Then I was really overwhelmed!  The deck that you board on was packed with people as you can well imagine and I was thinking to myself that I really didn’t want to fight this crowd of people for the entire cruise! But I needn’t have worried because I think this was just the initial crush of people getting on board …. The decks weren’t like that most of the time.

The staterooms weren’t quite ready for us so we just sort of wandered around marveling at this huge ship!  We still hadn’t seen any of my family as the ship was so large and crowded.  We were soon to find out that this was going to be the norm!  Once we leave port we will not be able to communicate via text as most of us don’t have an international data plan!  Richard and I purchased the onboard Wi-Fi so we were able to communicate through Facebook messenger.

Once the staterooms were ready we headed towards ours, which was quite nice and had a great balcony.  I only wish the bed had been more comfortable as this was to be our home away from home for the next four nights.  We hung out in our room for a while and we were soon underway.  I didn’t even know that the ship had started moving until I looked out the balcony window and saw the land around us moving …. It was that smooth!

My sister and her husband met us in our stateroom and then we headed down to the main dining room for our first supper aboard ship!  Since this is our first cruise I had no idea if I was going to be sea sick so we had an assortment of anti-sickness items.  I mainly wore an herbal patch behind my ear and I didn’t feel sick at all.  Good thing too as the food was really quite good!  We ate in the main dining room most of the nights except the night of the wedding reception.  Bev, Harvey, Caroline and Jess joined us at our table.

After an enjoyable dinner we all went to the top deck of the ship to watch the sunset …. stunning!  Then we wandered around for a while before we all went to our respective staterooms.  It was a great start to our cruise holiday …. Except I still hadn’t seen any of my other family members!