It was, like most embarkation days, not without its bumps, but we have left Galveston and are underway to, well, I’m not really sure, but I know there are two days at sea before we get there. It feels pretty darn good to be back.
I had pre-reserved a Lyft for this morning. I’ve learned my lesson. Turnaround days in Galveston are no time to be winging it. Demand pricing is sky high and availability is limited. We were going to be picked up from our hotel at 9:30am, and driver Steven, with his Suburban, had ample room for all our luggage. We’ve been using Lyft and Uber so much that I’m getting discounts almost daily. From the Seawall at 43rd St. to Terminal 28 was $14.71, our cheapest cross-island ride yet (in a moment of desperation, we paid $40 a week ago for a taxi when we were standing in the rain with our luggage after we got off the Jubilee).
Now that we’ve checked out, I’ll mention that our hotel was Home2Suites by Hilton. There is also a Tru by Hilton at the same location, which is a basic hotel room, but, as you saw in the pics I posted, we had a small sitting area and an equipped kitchen with a dishwasher and microwave. I had spotted it online the last night of the TA cruise and it was the first place G checked out on that disembarkation day. He was sold on the large walk in shower, the fact that it was new and not moldy or smelly, and it had a kitchen and a balcony and a Gulf view. We paid a phenomenal $129 a night from Sunday to Thursday, but the weekends were $288. It was outrageous during the Lone Star motorcycle rally, over $500 a night, so don’t leave for a cruise that weekend. We were quite a novelty there, staying as long as we did, and we were treated really well. Highly recommend.
We waited outside Terminal 28 for about 30 minutes until we could enter, go through security and then get in the Priority Lane to pick up our medallions. And there we hit our first snag: there were no medallions for us under our new cabin number. We asked them to look under our original cabin number. No luck. They looked under our TA cabin number (thinking that since our Medallion luggage tags still had that cruise’s cabin number on them, that might be where the Medallions were filed. Nope, nowhere. We were given blue cards and told to go to Guest Services on board. Medallions were made for us there.
Cabins were ready, of course, since there were no passengers disembarking, so we dumped our carry ons and were in the Allegro Dining Room for lunch when it opened at noon. It was so good to be back, and I couldn’t get over the contrast with dining room service on the Carnival Jubilee.
Embarkation day salmon
All’s right in my world
I returned to the cabin after lunch, hoping our luggage had been delivered, and it had, as well as someone else’s. These cabin upgrades just before embarkation day make things interesting. We think our minibar was delivered to our original cabin so we have to chase that down tomorrow.
After I unpacked, I went to the World Fresh Marketplace in search of our waiters from last cruise, and found three of the four of them. I had completed the surveys for both of us the day after that cruise ended, singing our waiters’ praises, and they did get the feedback. Glad I didn’t wait a week to do that!
Since we could not yet use our Plus Package to get alcoholic beverages (hate that when sailing out of Texas), I went down to the IC for an iced decaf coffee, and ended up staying and chatting with people until G picked me up to go to dinner. The Medallion app was not working until about 6pm, so we didn’t have the tracking capability, but G and I were using iMessage to keep tabs on each other. And the bars were all opened at about 5pm.
Maitre d’/ DRO Enache made sure we got the same table we had for the crossing, but our old wait team of Peter and Matthew switched places with new wait team Warren (Philippines) and Gift (Zimbabwe). As it turns out, Matthew and Gift are roommates. I always called Matthew ‘Sir Matthew’ but G called him Captain Bob (from Zimbabwe, get it?) so Gift is Captain Bob 2.0. We do enjoy our waiters immensely, which is the primary reason it is so important to us to have the same table, same waiters every night.
Back to healthy eating (but too much drinking)
Tonight’s show was a male vocalist/guitarist who is certainly one of the top ten performers we’ve ever seen on a cruise ship, not only because of his voice and guitar talent but also his showmanship and choice of material. If you ever get a chance to see Antonio Larosa, go! We loved his show and would have returned for the late performance but ended up falling in with a group at the Wheelhouse Bar.
There were lots of football games available around the ship this afternoon and evening, but I was keeping up with the scores in my phone. I was really enjoying doing ship stuff today after several weekends of football spectatorship, but I was happy to see the Lions continuing their run!
Piano entertainer Nany was playing in the Wheelhouse and she had told us she was going home to Argentina after the crossing so we had to see what was going on with her (she extended) and then Derek Dishington started playing about 9pm and we literally shut down the Wheelhouse after 1am. We started out with one other couple which grew to about 16 people by the end of the evening. We totally rearranged the Wheelhouse and our circle of chairs got bigger and bigger as people kept joining the group
It’s going to be a very fun cruise.
We crawled into bed at 2am, which became 3am when clocks were moved ahead over night.
It’s going to be a very exhausting cruise.
Life is amazing. :)
