Sail Away

Boarding a boat that is to be your home for the next seven days is a bit intimidating.  (Okay, probably not so much if you are a normal person, but I am just a teensy bit afraid of drowning, so I was a little scared.)  Turns out, sailing is pretty fun, especially going in and out of ports, and seeing the sights.  It was fun to sail out of New York Harbor, right past The Statue of Liberty.   We backed right over the spot where Captain Sully landed Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, which I found kind of a funny thing for someone to include on my uncle's tour guide map.

Just as we were boarding, we ran into my roommate for the trip, my dad's sister, Aunt Della.  She was a great roommate!  

Della, Mom, Dad with New York skyline

Me and Mom

After boarding, we got some lunch.  Let me just take this time to tell you that the food on the ship was incredible.  The buffets for breakfast and lunch had pretty good food.  I loved the omelet station for breakfast and the Mongolian BBQ for lunch. But the dining room for dinner was great.  Pretty food that tasted great.  And really funny and fantastic waiters.  And, the desserts!  Yum.  If you pay close attention (please don't!) you will see that the food really agreed with me.  My clothes fit a lot better at the beginning.  I'm pretty sure I had a couple of desserts a night and ate way too much.  

After getting some lunch, we went to one of the upper decks to watch New York pass by as we left.  They had crazy loud music going, and people were line dancing.  One lone guy was swimming in the pool.  Most everyone was on the upper deck as we left port.

The ship held 2,900 passengers and 1,100 crew members.  It was huge.  We had 20 people in our party, but only ran into Durell and Jayne.  Later we saw Denise and Dave and Diane and Larry, though.  And we always got to see everyone at dinner time.  

Durell, Jayne, Della, Doug, Roxanne

Jayne, Della, Me, Mom

The building on the left with the cranes on top is the new 9/11 building.  It is said to be about 800 feet high in this picture, and will be 1776 feet high when complete, commemorating the year our nation was born.

Manhattan skyline

Dad, Me, and Lady Liberty

Sailing under the Verrazano Bridge

Brooklyn skyline--my friend Lindsay's neighborhood from the boat, where we took pictures from the day before. 

We then checked out our rooms and unpacked.

And, of course, Dad and Della had to check the baseball scores.

Every evening, they would fold a towel into some kind of cute animal.  It was pretty fun.

Just after we unpacked, the people in the adjoining room began smoking in their room.  We couldn't breathe, the smoke was so bad.  So, we packed everything up again and they moved us to a different room.  It was a room without portholes and down the hall from Mom and Dad.  But, the room was clean and the air was nice, so we were happy.

I actually slept pretty terribly the first night on the boat.  I felt every tiny movement and heard every motor thrust.  After some ear plugs and some nausea bands (I really think they helped, even if it was psychosomatic) I did much better.  I kind of liked the boat gently rocking me to sleep each night.  After a day or two, I had my sea legs.  :)

And, the next day was a "Fun Day at Sea!"