I love it when we're cruising together

by Liv

The cruise ship is basically a floating Red Robin restaurant. There is an endless amount of food, tons of singing, dancing, "happy hands" type crew people and matching uniforms. All the crew people are smiling and extremely excited about their jobs. It's pretty fun!

We started the cruise off with a long conga line to some really loud music. We attributed the high volume to the fact that the average age of cruisers seems to be in the mid 70s. And Stella is (so far, from what we have seen and heard) the youngest person on the ship.

Once we checked out our room, we were relieved to see that it wasn't just a shoebox. It is, in fact, smaller than most hotel rooms, but not so tiny that we can't move around in it. Everything was clean and comfortable and we both breathed a sigh of relief as we started our 14 day journey.

Nobody was lying when they told us that there is endless food on board. The ladies in line with us told us that they were on their 50th cruise and offered some words of advice: "Wear your tightest clothes at the beginning of the cruise and save your bigger clothes for the end." I asked why and they explained that you eat so much, your skinny clothes don't fit by the end of the cruise! I didn't really believe them, but after seeing the food courts, I understand. There really is a ridiculous amount of food - and I'm pretty sure that we will need to work out in the on-board gym in order to keep all the calories in check so that we don't need our fat clothes :)

Once the ship embarked, I soon realized that the ship actually SWAYS. I guess I was under the impression that I wouldn't feel the movement of the ship unless we were in really rough waters. I was wrong. There is a constant (but not visible) swaying. I swear I am the only person who notices it because everyone else just goes along with their eating, drinking, bowling, swimming and shopping without the least mention of the fact that they are constantly moving side to side. It's actually kind of amusing, but I did have to double check with Nick to make sure that I'm not the only one who notices it.

Since starting the cruise, we have checked out many of the ship's amenities including many of the restaurants, the gym (It's awesome to do cardio while looking out a wall of windows at the open water!), the library, and we even watched a musical show tonight! Stella has been an amazing traveler so far. For all the people who told us that traveling with kids is impossible, they either haven't tried it or our child is the first non-horrible child to travel with. She eats with us and doesn't mind all the new foods we give her, she smiles and claps for strangers ALL DAY LONG and makes friends with almost every person that walks by. I think that because most cruisers are older, they really get a kick out of seeing a baby on board.

It's been a lot of fun so far and I look forward to posting more about our trip. On April 16th, we will arrive at our first stop, Portugal, just in time for my birthday! We plan on drinking one of the two bottles of wine that was delivered to our state room by room service. One was from Nick's parents, but I'm not sure who the other one was from... would anyone like to take credit for it?

From somewhere east of New York, we are sending everyone our love!