Royal Caribbean Western Caribbean Cruise, Day 1

Over the next several weeks (probably) I'll be posting from a journal I kept during my recent cruise. The ship was the Royal Caribbean Legend of the Seas. It was a 7 day, Western Caribbean cruise. Today is day 1. We woke up early today even though we packed last night and didn't need to be at the port until 1. The in-laws, better known as grandma and grandpa, got to the house around 10. Logan LOVES the grand-parents but especially grandma. He gets 100% of her attention. My two huskies love grandma too. Whenever she visits she brings treats. And she takes them for walks to the park. They howl when they hear her voice. I set the DVR to record BSG next friday. I love DVR. I won't miss any of my favorite TV. Invasion isn't on this wednesday. Lunch at Chili's. It was good but I was ready to get going. We got to the port a half hour early. We turned over the bags to one of the guys who works there. I tipped him $5 dollars for a medium bag and a huge bag. I don't know if that was cheap or not but it seemed fair for about 5 minutes worth of work. This ship is amazing. It's smaller than the ship we took on our honeymoon (carnival) but it still seems huge. We were on board and exploring in under an hour. The processing was smooth and painless. We took our first picture on the gangway going in. They were taking pictures against a backdrop. We decided to get ours. Once on board we walked around for a little while since we got there early. The room wouldn't be ready for a while. A view of Tampa, FL from deck 9 on the Legend of the Seas After a while we headed to our stateroom. We got a large oceanview stateroom on deck 3. The room was great but we were hungry. It was off to the WindJammer cafe and the buffet. I never got any pictures of the buffet but here is an awesome virtual tour. We had some snacks and then it was back to the room for a bit. We had to do a muster drill. A muster is where everyone on the ship puts on their life jacket and goes to their muster station. Our muster station was on deck 5 at muster station 12. It takes about a half hour for everyone to show up (some people are complaining idiots) and to hear the speil. Afterwards we went back to the room to change into swimsuits. We grabbed some towels and headed to the Solarium for a dip in the Jacuzzi. The Solarium was very quiet and peaceful. For some reason not many people were spending time in there. After the Jacuzzi we went back to the room and relaxed for a while. We showered and headed up to deck 4 for dinner. Dinner consisted of Tuscan Tomato soup, Caesar Salad, Shrimp Ravioli and chocolate ice cream for desert. The food was very good. The portions were kind of small but since we had snacked at the buffet earlier, it was sufficient. Back to the room a little TV. The ship had CNN International. I found out Don Knotts had passed away. That was sad news. He was incredibly funny. It was a loooong day. We turned off the lights and after some huggin and lovin, went to sleep. It was a good day. Tags: cruise vacation caribbean