Embarkation and Sailaway

This World Cruise began early on Friday, January 13, 2012.  Our friends Leslie and John drove us from Pompano Beach, Florida to Terminal 2 at the Port Everglades. 

What a surprise to see an empty check-in terminal!  We sailed through the administrative processes and within minutes we were onboard the Pacific Princess.  By 3:30pm we headed to The Club Restaurant for the General Emergency Drill.  There we were pleased to see our friend Sandy Gunder (Captain’s Circle Host/Future Cruise Consultant) as the Officer-in-Charge of the drill.  Sandy was on the 2011 World Cruise with us.  Shortly after the drill it was up to the open decks for the Champagne Sailaway Celebration.  We ran into many friends from last year.  It was really good to see them all.  Our luggage wasn’t delivered until almost 8:00pm just prior to dinner.  Our great Stateroom Steward, Gabby, went below decks and located our luggage.  We can’t thank him enough.  So the stateroom was in total disarray when we headed off to the evening meal.  But, the day didn’t end badly  It was capped off in style with a wonderful dinner in the Club Restaurant headed by the Executive chef,  Antonio Cortese and the Maitre d’Hotel, Carlos Da Rosa. 

Day 2—Sea Day

On the second day of the cruise, January 14^th, the Pacific Princess navigated along the northern coast of Cuba through the old Bahama Channel.  The water in this area is extremely shallow.  Today was spent getting our stateroom organized for the next 118 days onboard. Finding little places to put all the necessities we brought is always fun and, of course, trying to remember where you put things is an adventure in itself.

The Captain came on the public address system during the day to inform us of a change to the itinerary.  We were originally scheduled to visit Santa Marta, Columbia on January 17^th.  But due to incidents of drug related violence in Santa Marta and the city being paralyzed for days by dozens of gangs, Princess has elected to bypass this stop.  Instead, we will be going to Cartagena, Columbia on January 18^th, and will have a shorter period of time ashore.    

Day 3—Sea Day

The Pacific Princess is maintaining a steady south easterly course across the Caribbean Sea en route to Aruba.  Early this morning we passed between Haiti and Jamaica.  Today is one of many brunches which are held between 10:30am to 1:30pm on Sundays when we are at sea.  And, tonight is the first of 9 formal nights to be held during the world cruise.  The ship is holding The Captain’s Gala Cocktail Party.  Captain John Foster will be addressing the passengers at two events, time depending on whether you are 1^st or 2^nd Sitting for dinner.  On this cruise we elected to do 2^nd Sitting.  The main reasons for this choice were due to returning to the ship last year from tours and being rushed to make 1^st Sitting and we always missed sailaway from many of the ports. 

Today, Curt got a belated Birthday surprise from the ship (balloons, a card, and birthday cake)!!

Tomorrow Is The Day

It's been a long time in preparation for this upcoming World Cruise.  In fact it's been 567 days since we booked this cruise and now tomorrow at 4:00pm we will be sailing away from Fort Lauderdale.

After breakfast tomorrow, our friends, Leslie and John will be taking us to the cruise terminal for check-in and boarding.  We are really looking forward to seeing friends from last year's world cruise and seeing many returning crew members.  Of course there is the unpacking, arranging the stateroom, muster drill, and all the other administrative things we will need to do to get settled in and begin the cruise.  The ship should have a grand sail-away celebration on the top open desks as we slowly pass through the channel and head out into the Atlantic.  First stop after sail-away will be Aruba.

Bon Voyage to all our other passengers!!!
 

 

Stateroom Assignments

This morning we checked the Princess Personalizer and there it was.  Yes, we finally have a stateroom assignment.  Our original booking was for a Category BD Balcony Guarantee, basically anywhere on the ship in that particular category.  So, to our surprise, we received a Category BC on a higher deck and a good location.  We are now assigned to stateroom 7102 which is on the port side just 6 staterooms from the aft of the ship, our favorite location.  Well, as we continued looking at the Princess Personalizer this morning we got our second surprise.  On our extension of the World Cruise to the Holy Land we originally had a Category BF Balcony Guarantee.  But, Princess surprised us again and assigned us to 7102 for this cruise.  So, now we won't have to move between these two cruises.  This will really make things much more enjoyable and we will be able to enjoy "turn-around day" in Venice instead of packing up to move to a new stateroom.

 Thanks to Princess Cruises for giving us an excellent stateroom and understanding that moving between cruises isn't fun.  We really appreciate this nice gesture!!!

Yesterday we received an email from China Visa Service saying that they had received our visa paperwork on Monday and had begun the processing.  Hopefully our applications will get processed quickly and our passports will be back to us soon.

This morning we are down to 58 days until embarkation at Port Everglades and Sail-Away.