Boarding the Ship and Setting Sail!
Today we slept in, got up slowly, had a quick Burger King breakfast (I know, it doesn’t sound very good, but that’s the only open place close to us that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to eat at). We then packed our luggage and took a short cab ride to the Port of Miami. We got there at about 11, checked our luggage for on-board stateroom delivery, and sailed right through US Customs to the waiting room to board the ship. At noon, we boarded and explored the ship and ate a bunch of food (yum! 🙂 ) until about 2pm when we were allowed to go to our rooms and unpack. What a smooth and easy process.
The ship is very beautiful. It has 13 decks and has a running track, full production theater, 3 pools, 6 hot tubs, 7 restaurants, a number of bars, a casino, gift shops, many stores, an art gallery, fully furnished fitness room, large spa, and much more. For first-time cruisers, we were very impressed. This ship (the Norwegian Sky), it is not as big as some of the other ships, but we found it wonderful! What we liked was the dynamic of the passengers. Probably due to the time of year, there were many older folks on-board. There were hardly any kids (we wouldn’t bring our kids on a cruise like this one – Disney would be the only option), and some that were around our age.
Once our luggage was delivered, we got unpacked rested for a bit. We had an inside room right in the center of the ship. We were not sure how we would handle the motion of the boat, but it turned out that in our room, we couldn’t feel a thing. Whew! 🙂
Our stateroom was very small but had all the amenities that we needed. We didn’t need much more. All we did was store our stuff and sleep in there. We were surprised at how well the the rooms were designed for how small they were. 🙂
After we got all unpacked, we rested for a bit read the daily newsletter they give you about what’s going on on-board, and then went up to the 11th and 12th decks for the set sail BBQ and party at 5pm.
We ate again until we were stuffed sat out on the deck in sun chairs, listened to the live music, did a little people watching, and looked on as we sailed out of the Port of Miami and into the ocean!
Once we were underway and very full again from eating (this is a standard theme with every meal) 🙂 we wandered around the ship some more and figured out where everything was.
At 8:30, we went to the opening show at the theater called “Soul Rockin’ Nights” where the production company on-board performed and sang songs from the 50’s all the way through to the 90’s and dressed up accordingly. It was a great night of entertainment. During the production, we started hitting some higher seas, and we could feel the boat moving around. We were nervous for a bit, but we quickly adjusted and even though we could feel it, neither of us got sick and we were fine for the rest of the trip. We found out that calm seas are 3-6 foot waves, so what we hit tonight must have been larger! 😐 After the production, we went ate some more 🙂 and watched Karaoke until about 11pm. We were very surprised! The singers we heard tonight were actually VERY good! It was quite entertaining and not hard on the ears! 🙂
