Day 01 - Sunday 03/03/24

 This past week I've not slept well, and last night was no exception.  I was awake from 3am to 6:30am and fell back asleep until 8:30am. After showering and dressing. we headed down to the ballroom for breakfast.  We ate with a couple from Florida and a lady detective from Portland.  All of us were excited to be boarding in a few hours.


The hotel elevators were not working well so we ended up carrying our luggage down 3 flights of stairs and out to our waiting transfer bus.  The trip was about 1.25 hours and arrived at 11:30am.  For the most part it was one strip mall after another between Houston and Galveston.  Check in was smooth and efficient since we had our Princess Medallions (electronic key card).  It took about 1/2 hour to do the whole process. Our stateroom was ready so we dropped our carryon luggage and watched the safety video and checked in at our muster station before visiting the buffet for a nice but crowded lunch.






Drop down bunks


We spent the rest of the afternoon re-familiarizing ourselves with the ship.  We also met our steward, Jay, from the Philippines and unpacked out suitcases. The ship slipped away from the pier at 3pm and we slowly sailed down the channel beside the Carnival Breeze and the RCCL Harmony of The Seas. It got quite foggy as we cleared the island and many pelicans followed our departure. It was fun to watch the departure from our balcony stateroom A243 which is in the front 1/3 of the ship on the starboard side.





For dinner we used one of our two free casual dining dinners to enjoy sushii in the Ocean Terrace restaurant in the atrium and listened to really nice music. There was a Viennese string duo, and Seascape (a band and vocalists from Romania).  




The evening Princess theatre entertainment was Luis Melgar, the pianist/trombonist from the Wheelhouse Bar.  He was quite good.  Afterwards we watched music trivia in Princess Live with several hundred of our closest new friends.  Lucy, the hostess, was quite animated and announced she was leaving the shop in Belize as she had been promoted to Cruise Director. We finished up the day at karaoke and many of the performers were really good! It was probably one of the best karaoke sessions I've attended. There were some very talented singers.


We're off to a good start on this really short 7 day cruise. The ship is full with over 3,000 passengers and no reservations are available in the steak restaurant. There's a definite age mix with an average age much younger than a HAL cruise.

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