First day sail

Had our bags packed, veggies cooked and we were ready to hit the road Friday morning. It was a fun ride. It is always amusing to see chukku behind the wheel, all pepped up and singing to herself. From a moment of I will drive most of it, within an hour the sleeping beauty had the RDX seat at a 180degree angle and was sleeping to glory. The traffic was not too bad and we were at Long Beach within 5 hours. After a couple of wrong turns, and help from a friendly cop we got to the Cruise terminal. Parked our car, and rolled our luggage to checkin area. The first insight was when we got a friendly porter who reminded me that I could tip him rightaway :)

After immigration, we walked in to our first set of photographs as we were boarding the ship. Since the cabins were yet to open, and we were famished decided to hit the lunch buffet on the deck. There was food of all type, and don't even get me started on the types of desserts. After an hour or so of filling up our tummys, we went down to check our room. A nice Oceanview room on the lower deck. Small, but quite cute. After taking a shower and some rest, we went up to the deck in our gym dress as the ship started moving. Sandhya decided to hit the gym a lot more longer than me. Once she was back, we went out to our dining room. The good part was that she got her choice of Indian veggies for dinner. After this, we went around posing for photographs and idling our time checking out the ship.

Now a little bit about the ship. The ship was a good 800 ft long and 100 ft wide, and was carrying around 2000 passengers. It had twelve decks. From the fourth to the seventh were the passenger staterooms. The seventh had some Guest Services too. On the eighth level was the photobooth, casinos, a few lounges and shops. The ninth one had the dining rooms and a few more lounges. The tenth one had the open deck with swimming pools, jacuzzis and a buffet area, where there was a 24x7 pizza shop. The eleventh one was for gym and spa activities, while the twelfth had a track, mini golf and other fun things. The crew was of different nationalities, and there was help everywhere. The inside resembled close to some casinos in Vegas, and we could hardly sense any ship movements.

Pre-cruise

It was at Vijay's marriage dinner that Bhanu mentioned about a cruise that they were planning. This got me thinking, and I started looking up options for New Years. Found that there not many cruises from SF, and hence finally decided on the Ensenada cruise for New Years. Checked out the details and confirmed with Sandhya. All in a days work, went ahead and purchased the ticket.

The regular mail reminders kept reminding us of the cruise, but we did not do much until Xmas. For Xmas, got Sandhya a cocktail dress for the Captains dinner. There were a couple of days before the cruise when we were contemplating cancelling the cruise, but ultimately we decided to make the trip. The night before was spent in scurrying out for a change of cocktail dress and some last minute purchases.