All Aboard!

 Today went pretty much as planned… until…. Let me explain.

The plan: wake up, pack everything back into suitcases, eat breakfast, check out of the Savoy Hotel, catch pre-arranged ride to the pier (thank you Tahni), and board our ship.

The way it worked out: All was fine until we got to the pier. Alicia and I enjoyed a nice breakfast and managed to find our ride (or rather he found us) through wild traffic in a major city. We were dropped off at the first of a dozen unloading zones alongside a loooong building. We walked the length of the building, through a number of cattle gates, and dropped our three bags (now wearing new luggage tags) off at the appointed conveyor belt.

Our ship is not huge, by ocean-going cruise ship standards (about 1200 passengers but the same lines were sifting and separating guests of three cruise lines. So after ridding ourselves of large suitcases (and crossing our fingers, hoping for a reunion with our bags at the door of our stateroom) we were instructed to go to the very end of the loooong building (yes, the end where we were dropped off) and get into the correct line,

said line being the one adorned with our cruise lines logo, and walk back through more cattle gates. After arriving at the end of that line we were loaded onto a bus which wished us off to our ship- The Marina!

After climbing steps from the pier to the registration receiving line we exchanged our passports for a shipboard pass, then checked in at our Emergency Mustering station. We were then told to wander aimlessly around the ship and wait for the announcement that our staterooms were open and ready for us to move in.

The pool deck was pretty nice, even when sitting in port.

 The Marina Lounge where we gather for the dispatching of excursion groups

The Grand Stairway was impressive

 

Alicia enjoyed the service as well as the liquid lunch.

While waiting for our food, I logged onto the Wi-Fi network. And that is exactly where things began to unravel.

Alicia tried and tried, but couldn’t get logged in. We returned to our stateroom to find that our bags had been delivered (Two outa three ain’t bad!) I headed to Guest services to A) See if I could find out where bag #3 was, while Alicia unpacked and tried to figure out the Wi-Fi issue.

The bag, I was told, wasn’t lost, it just hadn’t arrived yet. The Wi-Fi issue was best dealt with at the Internet Services office on the 14th deck/level. The problem was that the Internet Guru was on a break from 4-5, and it was 4:15. So I pulled up a chair in this sea-worthy Internet Coffee shop, ordered a Cafe Americana Grande, and waited.

Meanwhile, back in the stateroom, Alicia had, she thought, figured out what was wrong with her phone. 

When I returned with a small-mindful of possible solutions to fix the issue, it took all of about 2 minutes to figure out that I didn’t have it figured out. Alicia was then convinced that the problem sat at the foot of Mount Verizon. They apparently thought that we had ample time to downloaded everything from old phone to new phone, so they (remotely) deactivated the SMM card and activated the new non-functioning phone. Now we had an old phone that worked but wasn’t enabled, and a new phone that was enable but not working. So we called Verizon.

We no sooner had Verizon on the phone than the ships PA system lit up with a Welcome Aboard greeting and about 75 safety messages, all at maximum um volume and completely obscuring the conversation we were trying to have with Verizon.

We were on the phone with Verizon for an hour, after which it was decided to deactivate the activated phone and reactivate the deactivated phone. After doing that it was discovered that the problem was ALSO with the shipboard Wi-Fi system. So we went back up to the Internet Cafe and had another conversation with the Internet Guru who, this time, showed Alicia how to turn on/off a VPN thingy that magically allowed her phone that wasn’t working to work until we were in port where, when off the ship the working phone would again not work!

Or something like that… I give up!

Stateroom bathroom is beautiful, and hopefully, functional.

and the pool deck is quite pretty at night too. If we were at see I might be sitting out there right now but… maybe tomorrow!

We have to meet at 8:15 for our first excursion - a Tigre-Delta river cruise. We will return to the ship for our launch just before sundown! We hope to have some nice pictures to share, but until then, Good night and Good Luck!