Arrival night and first day

Picking up where I left off.

Flight was uneventful (yay). I watched a movie (Gifted) and a lot of Family Feud. Steve Harvey is a very good and funny host. Especially when you're watching the Pro Wrestlers tournament.

At arriving at the airport, I was meeting my sister (who henceforth will be referred to as Beth since that's her name) at baggage claim. Got a text said she'd be there as soon as she figured out how to get there since the airport didn't believe in signage or working doors. She was there before the bag arrived, so all good. Went to the hotel and then took Lyft to dinner.

We went to Versailles - a well known Cuban restaurant. Very busy, but very fast service, and very good food. Then to the heart of little Havana for ice cream and back to the hotel.

Sunday morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast, and drove to the Budget office nearest the port. There were a lot of people there with luggage so I was wondering how many shuttles we'd have to wait through. Turns out most were coming off a cruise, and waiting on cars. We're doing that next Sunday since we have evening flights out of Ft. Lauderdale and don't want to spend the day at the airport, so will drive and stop along the way. After about 10 minutes a shuttle arrived, and all who wanted on, got on. Most were going to the Carnival Visa. They got dropped first, then the four people for the Equinox. Luggage drop was efficient, as was checkin. The boarding line was a little chaotic as some were waiting for the photographers, others weren't. Once past there it went quickly and I believe from dropping the car to onboard was less than an hour.

Upon boarding we were offered (and accepted) champagne or mimosas and then we went off to explore. I had my backpack and those reading this from Princess - you can't go to your room so I had it with me. We were in Concierge class, and there is a lunch for concierge in the dining room, so we took advantage of that. In the dining room there was a place to leave your carry on stuff. Somewhere in all this we made a dinner reservation for the second night in in Murano.

We sat with a very nice family and as lunch was ending, they announced the rooms were ready, so we headed up to the room to drop our stuff. We found the menus on the TV, so went through them to decide which night to do Murano. We determined that night 4 was the least appealing, so back I went to the dining room to change it. Which I did, about 15 minutes before the mustard (as my niece calls it) drill.

In the room, we found an invitation to watch sailaway from the helipad. After attending the drill - a demo of the life jackets, a video humorously covering the the safety information, followed by a tedious reading of all the cabins that weren't marked off as being there (they did a manual mark off) we were free to go. We went up to the helipad, got another drink (not sure what it was) and sailed out of Miami. As we entered the channel we left to go to the Sunset bar to meet up with our Cruise Critic group. That was a nice gathering.

We went back to the room, got ready for dinner and then went to a Rock and Roll review show in the theater with a band playing hits from the 50-80s. They were pretty good, and I missed dancing with my husband, who is working this week so my sister and I could do the cruise.

A little more ship exploring - the fun part for me because I know Princess ships like the back of my hand, but this is my first Celebrity- we got in line for our 8:30 fixed seating. Because Celebrity doesn't put the table information on the cruise card but on a card in the room, it's a bit slow the first day. If you have your card, great - if not, they have to look it. We brought our card, so were seated quickly once we got to the front of the line. We were at a table for 6 as requested, and there were actually 6 of us.

Starting tomorrow, I'll try to post food porn and describe dinner. For tonight, I'll just say food was good, service was good, and it was nice having both a sommelier and a drink package.

We were going to try to see a movie after dinner, but they close the doors after the movie starts and we couldn't get in. We'll try again tomorrow. We then went up to look at the top decks, saw the sky lounge and called it a night.