We woke up to a beautiful (translate: warm and muggy) morning.

Breakfast, reserve shuttle time to the ship, off to CVS to finish our supplies shopping, and back to the room to chill for an hour before checkout, lunch, 1:00 shuttle.

By the way, last thing before bed last night was confirmation that Australia will let us board the ship in Ft. Lauderdale:

On further review…we moved ourselves to an earlier shuttle – no sense sitting around the hotel when we can sit around the ship – so at 11:00 we were on our way.

We arrived at the port

…checked in

It seems that since this is a new ship to US waters the Coast Guard needed to do an inspection. There’s a rumor that they found something that needed to be fixed. That may, or may not, be true. Either way, it was shortly after noon before we were able to board.

We were given a glass of Champagne and routed to our muster station for a short “this is how you put on your life vest” demonstration.

Then we headed for Mamsen’s (the on-board deli) because they have an outstanding shrimp salad and lunch was imminent, only to find that they were closed. So we decided to have lunch at the pool grill (burgers, killer tuna, salad & such) but along the way were sidetracked by the cafeteria (called the World Cafe). This will be our traditional lunch venue, and occasionally a dinner location as well.

It was a convivial and relaxing time. I took photos of several couples and one offered to take ours.

During lunch the Cruise Director announced that all staterooms were ready so we hoisted our grocery sacks and backpacks and found our room. We also found Supriyono (pronounced “Super”), our cabin attendant. We had a nice chat and traded our in-room coffee maker for additional hangers. Then we began to unpack.

Since our luggage hadn’t arrived yet, we spent some time sorting thru our supplies

Then we had time to watch the safety video, read, and BLOG before the 4:00 safety drill. Since we already knew how to put on our life vest and had viewed the safety video on our stateroom TV (and responded to a question at the end of the video), all we had to do was listen to the Cruise Director go over some safety stuff on the speaker system. During that lecture our suitcases arrived so we spent the next half-hour unpacking and starting to put things away.

We took a break at 5:00 to join our Cruise Critic friends in the lounge for drinking and visiting and wondering why we hadn’t sailed away. Eventually someone reported that actual sail-away would be at 6:00 so we retreated to our stateroom to continue our adventure in trying to find a place for everything.

We did head back upstairs for actual sail-away then retreated to the World Cafe for dinner. That’s the most informal of meal options, but the food is excellent (Cheryl was so taken by the duck that she actually went back for seconds) and they unleash their sushi chef every evening.

Following dinner we took a couple of laps around the (quarter-mile) promenade deck,

and retired to our stateroom to finish fitting everything in.

At this point things seem to be (mostly) where they are supposed to be. There’s a bit of shoe-horning left to do but we’ve got time for that.

Now we’ve settled in for a bit of reading and such before we retire.

Tomorrow is a sea day so we get to try out our sea-day routine.

Note: We just got the Viking Daily for tomorrow. It looks like it’s going to be a busy day! Sadly, our schedule is so tight that we won’t be able to fit trivia in. Oh well.

Till then, sleep well. R