Last night, I received an email saying that our boarding would be delayed due to “technical difficulties.” Holland America instructed us to arrive mid-afternoon. Fine. We still left early, but we went to he Sawgrass Mills mall to shop and have lunch @ Matchbox in Sunrise before driving to the port.

The port–on a random Wednesday–was very quite compared to the bustle that’s more typical of a Thanksgiving cruise weekend departure. Our fellow guests–mostly retirees–seemed to have ignored the instructions from HAL re: boarding. I have to imagine that there were delays earlier in the day when boarding was denied, but we waltzed at our appointed time from the parking lot, thru the terminal, and onto to the ship without any delays.

We have an aft balcony cabin (#7145) on Zuiderdam. Our cabin is typical of this class of ship (we’d sailed on a sister ship, Westerdam, with the entire family a few years back), although the balcony is extra deep. Mom and Emerson have an inside cabin opposite us, though their door is around the corner.

Zuiderdam, Cabin 7145

View of balcony, Zuiderdam Cabin 7145

The rest of the first day was typical. We did the requisite muster drill. We made speciality dining reservations (limited on this ship). We ate dinner in the main dining room (generally decent or better with fairly good service for a first night aboard).

The day was rather hectic for Libby and me with our work obligations, as well as my finishing up packing. To save time, I dropped Libby off in the morning, and we all picked her up twelve hours later at 6:30. Dinner was in the car… McDonald’s.

Aside from some light rain, the drive was pleasant and uneventful. We checked into our hotel in Weston around 10:30 and promptly went to sleep.

Tomorrow we fly to Atlanta and then on to Rome!

I’ll blog along the way, but I may not update posts daily, preferring to use wifi on land if/where I can find it.

This should be a fun, relaxing cruise with Mom and Pop. It’s also the first time we’ll have been on a cruise for New Year’s.

Update

Sailing out of the Port of Tampa and down through the mouth of Tampa Bay took about 2 hours. Libby was especially excited to pass under the impressive span of the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Honestly, it’s not the most attractive sail away we’ve experienced, and the weather was gloomy with clouds and rain. But, it was still special to leave our home via the sea.

For dinner, we went to Moderno Churrascaria. It’s the ship’s new (to us anyway) Brazilian steakhouse concept. You start the meal with a ‘salad bar’ that was actually quite a bit more impressive in terms of the quality of its selections than the name suggests. Indeed, it was more like a Latin-themed antipasto spread. We then enjoyed a number of meat carvings (like 10 different selections) and a host of side dishes. According to Emerson, it was a T-Rex’s delight!

Hungry, we headed for lunch in the Da Vinci dining room. In the interest of time, I won’t recount everything we ate, but I’ll say the food was very good, especially my mother’s fettuccine alfredo in a crisp parmesan basket. After lunch, we headed to our cabins to unpack and get settled in.

Sail away was scheduled for four o’clock, but we departed closer to five.

With the entire family aboard, we opted for traditional fixed seating dining at 5:30. It’s a little early, but it works well for our schedule. We met up with Libby’s parents (who arrived at the port an hour or so later than us) for the first time just before dinner.

Our meal was enjoyable and ran very smoothly. The menus (both for adults and kids) are nicely varied with a good number of selections. Too many selections to talk about, but I’ll note the creme brûlée was especially a hit with those who tried it (though mine is better).

We retired fairly early given the early morning drive down from Tampa.

It’s good to be back aboard Princess. We enjoyed our cruise on the Caribbean Princess out of San Juan in 2011. Ruby Princess, our current ship, is very similar — so, Libby and I feel right at home.

Here’s a view of the Ruby Princess’s atrium:

The 7 day cruise is to the Western Caribbean and visits Mexio, Belize, and Honduras, as well as Key West. That will add +2 countries for us — making our projected total a net gain of +7 in 2010 (including our trip on the Nieuw Amsterdam in July — not bad, all things considered).

Here’s a photo of the Pearl (taken on a weekend cruise in October, 2008):