Boarding -- Saturday, May 9

Saturday, May 9, 2008

Today, we got up and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We had wanted to go to a crepe place we saw around the corner the day before, but they were closed on the weekends. We both had french toast, and boy was it good! Then we went and packed up our bags, put them in storage and headed over to the cruise ship docks to see what we were getting ourselves into. It was still too early to board. We found our ship and saw that people were starting to board, so we decided to head back, grab the bags and a taxi and get in line. We sure were glad we did, because it was a long wait. (2-1/2 hours) Luckily, only two ships were leaving that day. They can have up to five leaving at the same time! And everyone goes through the same processing line. Talk about hearding cattle. Customs was the hold-up from what we could tell. We were happy we were US citizens. Some of the non-US and non-Canadian citizens were waiting for HOURS and HOURS. You know, we sure were glad we brought our passports. We had heard that we wouldn't need them because the date for needing them to enter Canada and Mexico had changed, but we did need them. Thank goodness.

Once we got on board, we decided that we needed to figure out where to eat. Our luggage had not been delivered yet, so why not? We couldn't really unpack without our luggage. We found the infamous buffet and had a bite -- we had skipped lunch, thinking we'd eat soon enough. It wouldn't take too long in line. HA! In our ship exploring, we found the pizza station, so we had some pizza too. Then, we decided that we needed to go back to the buffet again. As we were finishing up our 3rd "meal" between 2:30 and 7:30, we agreed that we would do better to stay on a normal schedule for eating. But, that doesn't mean we stayed on a normal calorie count. That night was just cruising and settling in.