The day had finally come. It was time to depart for my second Caribbean cruise. I left work at noon. The girls and I were all meeting at my friend's house at 5:00, and it would take me an hour to get there, so I had a few hours to finish up the last minute packing, and then to pick up another friend on the way. We arrived at 4:50, and waited for the others. We were on the road, headed to Detroit by 5:15. We had booked a hotel for the night near Metro airport, so after about a 2 hour drive, we arrived at the hotel. After going out for a late dinner, we returned to the hotel and showered, after a little bit of conflict over who was getting the beds, and who was getting the floor, we hit the sack. There were 6 of us in our group so, by no one's fault but our own, we were short on sleeping space. That's what we get for sneaking 6 people into a 4 person hotel room.

Day 1 of our cruise: We had an 8:15 flight, so we got up at 5:00 am. We took a shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport, and were entertained for the ride by a young boy who took great delight in sharing with us his experiences on "all both" of his airplane rides before. Our flight on Northwest was uneventful, and it arrived on time. Upon arrival in Orlando, we were greeted by our (private) shuttle driver George. He was very accommodating, and accepted my challenge of getting us to the port in 40 minutes or the ride was free. After a very exciting, and probably dangerous, ride from Orlando to Port Canaveral, we arrived in port with one minute to spare. We paid George his fee, along with a generous tip, and sent him on his way. Embarkation moved rather quickly, despite the long line. Prior to arrival there had been a lot of changes to our itinerary, due to Hurricane Dean. Our original itinerary called for Cozumel, Costa Maya, Belize, and Nassau. We were handed information sheets in the embarkation line that finally informed us that our ports of call would be Cozumel, Belize, Roatan Honduras, and Freeport Bahamas. We were on board at about 12:30, with our sail & sign cards in hand. We lucked out and discovered that our rooms were ready, so we headed up to deck 7 Empress, to check them out. My first piece of advice is spring for an ocean view room at minimum. The inside cabins were too small, but more importantly, they were too dark. I hated not knowing if the sun was up or not. After settling in, we headed up to deck 9 Lido and purchased our soda cards, and then headed to the buffet to grab some lunch.

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