1/17–Celebrity Millennium

Refreshed, repacked and ready – we check out of the hotel, they call a cab, and after a little confusion, we finally get a car to take us to our home for the next few weeks.  15 minutes and we’re at the pier where everything runs smooth as silk.  Bags are checked in, we’re checked in, passports handed over (we’ve not done that in FOREVER) and we’re drinking our champagne headed to the Oceanview cafe in record time.  Nice.

We wander the ship a bit first, because it is sort of hard to get your bearings again, when you get used to the Solstice class ships.  Bistro on 5 is now $10 (for sandwiches?) and it is toward the rear of the ship with the Cellarmasters bar.  The dining rooms are in the same location, but the specialty restaurant, Qsine is upstairs on deck 11 which throws me. The Sky Lounge (called Cosmos) is in the same location, but laid out totally differently – my first reaction was “what happened to the bar?” – it’s in the back of the room, not the center circular like always.  Ha!  Whatever – it’s not that big a ship – I’ll get used to it!

Lunch – first day – always the same – but fine.  We’re not all that hungry, but trying to get salad is hell when it is Code Red (which we learn the official name is OPP – haven’t deciphered the acronym yet though).  It’s hard enough when you are waiting in line behind people who are getting their own salad (come on people, just pick up the tong and serve yourself!), it is worse when they are standing there hemming and hawing and a server has to put things on your plate.  No, more. More, please. No less.  Argh.  Hopefully we’ll be cleared of this soon.

Rooms are ready at 4, so we dutifully head there at the appointed time.  No luggage yet. But they are staging it down the hall. So, we keep going down there and finding one piece at a time and wheeling it down to the room.  We end up almost all unpacked before the lifeboat drill.

Dinner – good. Show – good.  Cabin – um – well – not so good. They sort of forgot to turn down the cabin the first night.  We are sure it was an oversight, we are the very last cabin our team has, so it is easy to forget us.  We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. 

And thus ends our first day aboard the Celebrity Millennium.