I didn’t need my alarm this morning. About 2:30 I realized that I had forgotten to enter my time at work to cover my vacation period. I woke up and got on the computer using my thumbdrive encryption key to access my government account. Of course it tells me that my password is wrong even though I had used that password as recently as Friday. So I have to email my boss and my timekeeper and ask them to do my forms on my behalf which is really rude on my part. But at four o’clock I’m ready to go and so is Joy.

A friend had offered us a ride but had fallen back asleep so it wasn’t till 4:30 that we left for the airport. I was kind of stressed until I was through the security checkpoints and realized that my flight was an hour later than I had been worried that it was.

Joy had not been impressed with the packing light experience of our last cruise and had decided to bring a huge suitcase weighed down to near the legal maximum. After a pleasant flight (in which we had to sit in separate rows) we arrived in Miami.

Now who’s packing light?

Miami International is a pleasant airport. They have a very cool large scale sea plane model hanging from the ceiling with propellers turning. The walk from Terminal E to baggage claim is a hike. We found baggage claim but not Joy’s bag. It wasn’t expected to arrive in Miami until after doors to the cruise ship had closed. Royal Caribbean was a peach about providing us with toiletries and complimentary formal night attire. But just before we left port at 5 pm the bag in question magically appeared in our room.

The Royal Treatment

We spent the intervening hours comforting ourselves with food and taking pictures. The view of Miami from the Jewel of the Seas is impressive. It came across as a place that would be fun to live if one had a few mill in one’s billfold. We started our cruise unable to get to our rooms because we had boarded early. We tried the Royal Caribbean bus transfer service. Bag handling was convenient but there was a lot of standing around waiting. However, it did allow us to get to the cruise terminal early. The good news was that they let us start boarding the ship at about 11:15. We waited in a room with cookies and drinks. By 11:45 we were on the ship. Boarding isn’t supposed to start until one so we beat the clock in terms of access to that portion of the ship.

I think we might have one of the worst balconies on the ship. We’re on a corner so the deck space is roughly half of a normal room’s. Our Royal Caribbean CR must have thought CR stands for Customer Rip (-;. But you know what they say about a bad balcony right? It beats no balcony at all.

Dinner was excellent. I had the fried pork medallions and Joy had the sea bass done to a lightly toasted brown. Excellent. We went to the Safari Club and listened to one of the crew members fill in for the dance band’s lead singer who was sick. I’m thinking she can stay sick because this young man was good. Sorry, but the band just isn’t as good as the Casablanca band. Still entertaining, though and we enjoyed their play list. We then walked out to the Schooner bar and listened to the Irish piano man which I enjoyed even more. But alas, much time had passed since 2:30 a.m. and it was time to sleep it all off and be ready to start again tomorrow.