At sea

After a pretty good sleep, Ted and I packed up the rest of our things for our cruise today. After breakfast and a coffee at the cafe I discovered around the corner, we called an Uber to drop us off at the cruise ship terminal. The Uber driver needed to go around a few times since he didn't seem familiar with where to take us, but between the three of us, we figured it out eventually.

The Florida boys ended up staying out later last night after they found another bar nearby. They messaged us to join them but we were already asleep by that stage. The check-in process at the port was actually quite speedy but as the agents kept calling out "passports out please", we remembered the boys telling us they couldn't bring them as they weren't yet ready. Even though the cruise ship company had told them they only needed ID, we wondered if they would make it onboard! And with no data roaming on our phones, we couldn't contact them to check.

After boarding, Ted and I went to get a buffet lunch in the restaurant first. We ended up seeing the guys in the dining room afterwards, which was a relief! After taking some time to explore the ship, we then each had to go to our own muster stations (ours was in the theatre) to watch a surprisingly entertaining evacuation video. Ted and I then went for a snooze before going upstairs for a sailaway mai tai from the top deck.

As there was an LGBTQ meet-up tonight, we planned to go with the guys to meet any other similar people onboard. There is a tour company named "Pied Piper" that has an organised tour of LGBTQ travelers, so we thought some may turn up. We found out later they had their own function at the same time but it didn't matter - we met Andy and Craig from Wales, Mike and Patrick from Vancouver, and Chris and Andrew from Orlando. We are all a similar age, and the ten of us got along very well.

So far, the cruise has been great as we were lucky to meet some wonderful people the first night. We're looking forward to what lies ahead!Read more