Lazy Days At Sea

Our first full day on the ship was a day at sea. The previous day we had unpacked our bags, settled into the room, enjoyed a lovely dinner, and crashed via the exhaustion of travel and trekking around all day. We all woke up just a tad later than desired, since we wanted to take full advantage of lounging around on the deck and getting started on our week full of cocktails. I frankly didn't take that many pictures of the ship, too engaged in ridiculousness and relaxation to pull out the phone very often. That activity was of course reserved for frolicking on the isles. I vividly remember most of the places we frequented, however, beginning with the lovely pool deck. There were of course pools, hot tubs, and a giant yellow water slide. On day one, however, we nabbed some deck chairs and spent the first several hours after breakfast catching some rays and reading some books. Breakfast was itself an activity due to the fact that the most convenient venue was the buffet, overflowing with diners, many of whom had never before interacted with the human race. 

Our daily routine on board turned into something of the following... breakfast at the buffet, cocktails, lounging on deck or excursion off boat, cocktails, team trivia, cocktails, fine dining, cocktails, and sleep... repeat. In terms of the first day, however, we spent part of the afternoon exploring the ship. There was of course a gym, a theatre, a casino, several bars, even more dining rooms, an art gallery, and we even saw a library which we never stepped into. Our little cabin was hilariously small, consisting of 4 bedrooms strategically placed in the smallest space imaginable. Two twins with a bunk over one and a trundle under another. I was in one of the original twins under the bunk. And yes, I felt like I lived in a fort. I completely anticipated Marx Brothers-esque moments a la "A Night At The Opera". Though surprisingly, we never fell onto each other and even more importantly, never actually killed each other. 

The only slight issue we had to deal with daily was the fact that, per our booking special, two of us received unlimited alcoholic drink packages and the other two soda packages. For one of us, soda was a give-in due to her knocked up status. (Yes, she was the one banished to the trundle bed on the floor.) Not wanting to leave one person having to pay for drinks, we had to figure out the ins and outs of Sea Law (not unlike Sky Law, enforced my Matt  Damon of course). This meant discreetly (or not so discreetly) asking one of our first servers how we could get around this absurdity. Thankfully, our good man, if not rather stoic, Vlad told us it didn't really matter as long as two of us flashed our cards here and there. We later learned that buying more than two drinks on our unlimited card was entirely dependent on the server's mood, experience, and general opinion on rule-breaking. We quickly learned who to seek out when we needed appropriate libations.

The other significant thing we did on our first day was to engage in team trivia. Since I had been on cruises twice before and am one of a family of strangely informed nerds, I felt it my obligation to attend this activity every day. We had also made t-shirts before the cruise. Not for this purpose, but because we wanted to be awesome Greek Goddesses, celebrating our second trip together as a #foreverquartet... which was of course our team name. We each chose a different color and a different goddess name, though the front was a picture of us four in Ireland during our last vacation together. Since one of the answers ended up being one of the goddess names on our shirts, we felt certain our week had already been blessed by these ancient mythical beings.