Wednesday, January 8 - Miami departure

 The Bellman knocked on our door at just about 6:30 am to collect our luggage.  As requested, we had it sitting by the door so he was able to just open the door and pull it out without us even seeing him.  A breakfast buffet was provided and afterwards, we gathered for our assigned bus for the transfer.  We were scheduled to be on the first bus at 9 am but no bus appeared until about 9:20 due to more awful traffic.  We got to the ship in about 25 minutes and check-in went very smoothly.  Our cabin was ready so we dropped off my carry on and went to refresh our memories of the ship.

At the hotel we saw one passenger we've sailed with before, and now on board, we've seen several more.  I'm also happy to see that Terry Bishop, our favorite lecturer, is on board so we stopped to say hello.  And, also happily, Andrew Gellar is the Cruise Director.  We've sailed with him twice before and he's such a nice young man.  I expect we'll be having dinner with him at some point.  

Here's the listing of the administrative staff:

We had lunch at the buffet, where we saw Momocoli who is now the maitre'd at Horizons.  He was on our Mediterranean cruise where they had to cancel the ports in Israel and Egypt because of the Hamas attacks.  We joked about how we got to see a lot of Istanbul when they had to change the itinerary. 

We were by the pool just before our 1 pm departure and had a nice chat with two of the entertainment crew, Nick and Ashley (a couple apparently), from Canada.  

By that time, our luggage was in our suite, so we spent some time unpacking.  Our room steward, Sai (from Myanmar), stopped by to introduce himself and see if we needed anything.  Ice and more hangars were delivered shortly.  

Michael went to the fitness center for a bit and I went to get us reservations at the specialty restaurants.  While doing that I ran into more passengers we have met as well as Vishnu, who is now the manager of Coffee Connection and Compass Rose.  We were on the Grand Arctic with him and his twin brother, whose name I can't recall but we should see him at dinner tomorrow at Chartreuse where he is the manager.

We went for a drink at the Mariner Lounge before dinner and met Roger and Barbara Frazier from Alabama.  (Easy names to remember since we have friends named Barb and Roger at home.) We went on into dinner together and had a lovely time.  I asked for the Wente Chardonnay with my dinner as I've had it before on the ship and like it.  When we got back to our suite, there were two bottles waiting for us.  Wow.