Cruisin'...on a Sunday afternoon

We're here! Greetings from the Carnival Legend. It's been a very busy day, so I have a lot to share. Our flights were uneventful and on time. Do you remember my comment about trying not to over pack? Well, I over packed. At least the airline thinks I overpacked...by 7 lbs. At 6:15 this morning I was stuffing the top layer of my neatly packed suitcase into my carry on. It wasn't fun. Becky's suitcase "only" weighed 52 lbs, so she didn't have a whole lot to remove from her bag. After that calamity, travel was a breeze.


Here are a few pictures of the Legend that I took at port.

I have to say that arriving at the port was not at all what I expected. In my mind, I pictured the boat anchored in a remote, maybe even picturesque, area. Instead, it was docked in what looked like downtown Tampa. It was really strange. (I think I'm commenting about it in this video.)

We checked in here around 1pm. We couldn't get into our rooms until 1:30 so we headed to the Unicorn Cafe on the Lido deck for lunch. The Unicorn Cafe has several different serving stations that each feature a different type of cuisine. Today, they had Italian, Asian, Rotissiere, Deli (sandwiches and paninis), Grill (burgers and fries) and Pizza. They also have a pretty good salad bar and of course, many desserts. I had a Rueben and a salad, while Becky had Chicken and a salad. Sorry. No pictures of the food. I had originally planned on documenting our food, but I decided I don't want other passengers thinking I'm a freak. (no comments from the peanut gallery, please)

After lunch, we headed down to our cabin. Miraculously, a valet was right ahead of us in the hall dropping off our luggage. How great was that? Especially since this is what it looks like when they load the luggage on the ship. Have you ever seen so much Samsonite?



Here is the nickel tour of our cabin.

After we settled in and unpacked, it was time for the muster drill. This is a safety drill which requires all passengers to report to their assigned lifeboat area for a review of the safety procedures. This is a picture of our group in Muster Station D.

Later, I tried on the life jacket for good measure.




Once the muster drill is complete, we can set sail. It's not at all like the Loveboat. There is no one standing on the shore waving as we sail away, and I didn't see any confetti being thrown in the air. We just sort of left quietly.

After all this excitement, Becky decided she needed a nap. While she rested, I found the laundry facility and ironed all of my clothes. Because of the fire hazard, they don't allow irons in the cabins. It's a little bit of a pain, but but I decided to get it out of the way early and beat the rush.

Many of the cruise reviews I read mentioned how cool it is to watch the ship pass under the Sunshine Bridge. I'm not entirely sure where this bridge is located geographically, but I think the significance of this bridge is that we are leaving Tampa Bay (feel free to correct me in the comments). The significance of watching the boat travel under the bridge is that the clearance for the "fin" on the top of the ship is about 6 feet. Here's a picture.




By this time, it's about 6:45pm. We are in the late dining group and are schedule to eat at 8:15pm. We headed back to the cabin to chill out and get cleaned up for dinner. We went down a little early, and the line to get into Truffles is pretty long. We do a little more exploring around this area of the ship (um..the casino) and finally head into dinner. I'm not sure how Carnival decides to seat everyone, but we are at an 8-top table. Two of the people never show (this may mean they changed their eating time, they ate more casually at the Unicorn Cafe, or they chose to order room service.) Our other "tablemates" are two sets of female friends. Christine (from Dallas) and Diane (from Seattle) are old friends who reunited on Facebook. The other two are from Illinois (Melissa and Amy). The funniest part of dinner was that Diane was totally not feeling well, and neither was Melissa from the other group. Admittedly, the waters seem to be a little rough right now. You can really feel the boat moving, and I've stumbled around several times trying to get my footing. Then I notice Becky's not eating. She's just sort of looking at her food. Then one of the OTHER girls starts turning a little green. Within 10 minutes, I'm left at the table with Christine from Dallas. Becky came back to the room to rest, and when I came up here at about 11pm, she was snoozing. (Yes, Mom, we both took dramamine.) Our waiters laughed when our table became deserted. He said it happens a lot on the first night. Did I hear someone ask what I had for dinner? I had Gazpacho as an appetizer and Tilapia for my entree. Both of these options were part of their lighter fare. BUT, I did have molten chocolate cake for dessert. It was good, but not GOOD. Whew! That means I won't have to have it every night.

It's an early night for us tonight (well, I went to bed at 1am.) Tomorrow is a scheduled "Fun Day at Sea" so there will be plenty of activities on board to keep us busy. I'll leave you with a picture of our first towel animal left for us by our cabin steward. I think this is a dinosaur.





Keep your fingers crossed that we head to calmer waters soon.