The Winter Holiday - A Day At Sea

Have I mentioned I'm on a cruise? 12 days covering Spain, Morocco, Portugal and the Canary Islands.

Boarded the ship in Barcelona Tuesday afternoon with no trouble. Being a Latitudes member has it's advantages I guess. Either that or the fact that we were in Barcelona already so were at the port when check-in opened, so no real queues had started yet.

Our cabin is on deck 5. Being low down, inside and mid-ship are all good things should the seas get rough. You feel the motion more as you get higher. So sure you could have a fancy schmanzy garden villa with your own private viewing patio on deck 13, but should those swells get large, I wouldn't want to be attempting to walk from one side of the cabin to the other. I'm quite happy in steerage ;)

OK it's not that bad in the cheap cabins, but they are tiny. I keep forgetting how narrow a twin bed is. But who needs a big cabin when you've got a whole ship at your disposal. This is cruise number 4 for me and the Norwegian Jade, is a big one, 13 decks holding 2700+ passengers plus crew.

The other advantage (if you can call it that) with staying down on deck 5 is that everything is up. The cafe, the restaurants, the pool deck, the bars, the gift shop it all involves going up the stairs. Yes you heard me, stairs. There is only one rule for us girls when ever we go on a cruise is 'no elevators' we can only take the stairs. It helps to offset the over abundance of sinful food choices :)

The first day is a sea day which gives us time to explore the ship and get our bearings. A tip we've been told is the dolphins in the carpet (yes, there is a dolphin pattern in the carpet) always swim toward the front of the ship. Speaking of carpets and décor, oh my, this is a bright ship. Orange, pinks, electric blue, lime green, mermaids, jelly fish, neon lights tacky tacky tacky... The ship was initially built for the Hawaii itinerary so they went bright. I feel sea-sick looking at some of the rug patterns.

And I haven't even started with the passenger bad fashion statements yet. Lots of time.

I'm not able to upload photos in these posts, the low connection speed doesn't allow this through Blogger. But funny enough I can upload photos to my Flickr account so just click on the link off to the left and you can see them there. I haven't got round to titles, tags or descriptions but it's a start.