Day One: New York City, NY

May 31st, 2016 New York City, New York

Day One of my cruise to Iceland. Not really much to say about the cruise today. It was
a very boring day? We got to the harbor pretty early in the morning, and from
there it was basically being on hold for about twenty minutes with my credit
card company so I could tell them I was going overseas, and then we were
basically allowed on the ship… But there’s not much we could do since our
luggage hadn’t been delivered to our state rooms, so it’s not like I could go lounge
at the pool or anything.

The ship is called the Pacific Princess. It’s very elegant.  There’s a library with leather couches and a fireplace…. Staircases everywhere… I haven’t seen anybody my own age yet, but that’s okay, it’s not like I’m going here to try to make friends. Our room is
little. It has two twin beds, a closet, a TV, a couch, and a small fridge. We
do have a balcony though, and I can foresee myself sitting outside on the
balcony and reading the 45 or so books I downloaded on my kindle before I left.

The toilet is special. You need to close the lid and then flush it because there’s
mad crazy suction and would probably suck you down with it. The shower is
pretty small, but looks okay. It’s bigger than the shower I had when I stayed
on a kibbutz in Israel in 2010, at least.

After we found our room, we went to the buffet for lunch. The buffet had a lot of
strange foods on it like liver and weird fish things I didn’t want to eat, so I
basically only ate cheese, honeydew, and jello for lunch. My mother later told
me that there was an entire other side of the buffet, and it was filled with
normal food like pasta and sandwiches…. Oops. Oh well.  The melon was good. The jell-o was pretty tasty too, and cheese is always delicious.

After lunch, we went to the spa, and paid to become members of a private hot tub that
we can use the entire time we’re here and it’s like a mineral pool. Then I
signed up to get a hot stone massage tomorrow. Then it was back to the room.

I read an entire book on my kindle- Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand, which was pretty
decent.  I called Justin while I still
had cell service before turning my phone off for the remainder of the trip
since I don’t do international calls.

There was also a muster drill, which is where we sat in the cabaret lounge and
listened to health and safety rules and practiced putting on our life jackets.
Then it was time for dinner.

Dinner wasn’t bad. I had a cream of onion soup and then salmon with mashed potatoes.
For dessert I had vanilla ice cream with whipped crème and chocolate sauce. We
sailed past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as the sun was setting,
which was pretty nice. The couple, who sat at our table was very nice, it was
open seating, so we won’t normally sit by them. The lady was a teacher, so we
talked about teaching, and apparently her and her husband had been on a lot of
cruises, so they and my mom were talking about different cruises and things
while I stared out the window.

Now I’m back in the room. The ship is moving and it feels like I’m on a roller coaster,
I can’t decide if I like it or am going to be seasick… Maybe the rocking will
help me sleep? There are cute kitty cats on the television. And I’ll probably
read some more kindle books before going to sleep.

So like I said, Day One wasn’t that interesting, though I will say some of the cruise workers from other countries are very attractive men, so there’s some nice eye candy. Tomorrow is our first day at sea and the first day of the cruise, so maybe I’ll have more to talk
about tomorrow.