Tuesday seaday 1

 Up bright and early to have breaks, essentially eat and drink anything left in the fridge.  One of the fun things about the accomodation we had was the garbage shute.  Once we figured it out you could see it would be handy.

Our pickup was arranged for 10 am and he was a few minutes early.  We loaded all our things into the limo van and we were off.  It took us about 30 minutes to get to the port, super efficient.

Tony saw the ship first, and she is a massive beast.  We got delivered right to the luggage drop off, and as soon as we got out a lovely little lady told us that as soon as we dropped off the bags we could begin to board! First up was the Covid vaccination proof and negative rat tests.  We took our tests yesterday, and kept them with us in little individual bags.  Once we showed those we could bin them so that was step 1 complete.

Step two was up the escalators and was essentially answering a “does anyone feel unwell today compared to yesterday?”.  Then we got checked in.  Check in matched our faces and passports and then we got to move to stage 3.  Next was having our bags scanned looking for contraband. Electronics out to be checked and all went through the scanner.  The 4th and final stage was immigration.  As I was tour leader I got to take control of the passports and get us all on.

It was now just a couple of minutes after 11 and we walked the last long path up the gangway and onto the ship.  Once on we headed straight to cafe270 to get a good spot to wait for our room to be ready and to have some lunch.  We tried the Reuben sandwich and the beef kummelweck rolls.  They were pretty good.  Also fired up the drinks packages - a couple of wines and a great big beer.  We also found a spot to give us our refillable drink cups.

The rooms were ready a little early, so once we got the call we were off.  We had two rooms on deck 9, and Don and Nate were way at the back on deck 6.

We spent the afternoon unpacking and chilling out before dinner at 515.  Sail away was about 4 pm so we were able to watch us reverse up from our balcony.

Dinner was lovely, and as we were tired we pretty much retired to our cabins early to get ready for sleep.  We watch t