Hi, peepsicles! I've been away on a cruise holiday for the past week where there's no wifi, which is why I haven't updated my blog (annoyingly). It was amazing, all aspects of it. The ship itself, the views, the days out - all of it was amazing! Well, nearly all of it...I'll let you see for yourself...
So we (me, my parents, my friend, and her mum) set out nice and early in the morning on Saturday so that we would arrive at the Southampton docks with plenty of time to spare before we boarded the ship. This turned out to be a great decision, as we got stopped by the police halfway there...my dad was pulled over by a policeman on a motorbike on the A3 road. I actually learnt a lot from that most dreadful 20 minutes. I learnt that having a good job keeps you on the better side of the law, as does a clear record, obviously. I also learnt about penalty points which can get deducted from the driver's record if you get pulled over, which thankfully did not happen. And I learnt that if the policeman deems you to be a terrible driver, he'll send you to have another lesson on whatever topic you seemed to fail at. For £150. So my dad has to have a 'lesson' one day. According to my mum, it serves him right, because apparently my dad is too cocky when he drives... And me? Well, my dad wasn't driving dangerously or anything, he just didn't see the ambulance behind him and move to the side fast enough. But, whatever the policeman says, you better just do it.
Anyways, we still arrived at the dock quite early after all, giving us plenty of time to explore the massive ship after checking in and going through security. The security there is very much like the ones in airports - there's a bag tunnel scanner thing, and a human doorway scanner thing. I honestly have no idea what they're called...but after going through all that security and admin, we finally boarded the Azura, our cruise ship.
As we weren't allowed to enter our cabins yet, we spent a little time exploring the ship...getting used to the immense atrium, navigating the multiple decks, and finding our way around the horribly long corridors. I'm not joking, the corridors by the cabins span almost the whole length of the ship, and our ship was huuuuuuuge. It has to be that massive to be able to fit a sports court, theatre, casino, gym, multiple restaurants and swimming pools, and tons more. There's even an art gallery! We also realised there was no thirteenth floor (or deck, as it's called) because it's 'unlucky'. So cool!
Carrying on...*trying to remember* I think the next thing we did was go to our room (cabin) where we needed to find our life jackets for a drill which was coming up later. The drill was at 4:15 pm if I remember correctly, and it consisted of all the passengers scrambling to find their 'muster stations', whilst dragging their life jackets around and trying not to trip over the straps. In the 'drill' itself, we just sat at the muster station (in our case it was the Manhattan restaurant) and listened to a man teach us how to put our jackets on...pretty boring. The fun part was actually after putting it on, as everyone there started blowing their whistle and switching the torch on. It was chaos.
Now you may be wondering, how on earth do you even physically have space for five meals a day?! Well, let me tell you. The first meal is at the beginning of the day, breakfast. That's fairly obviously going to be one of the meals. Next, we have the meal dubbed as 'I'm-hungry-can-we-eat-something?', which is at any time between breakfast, and the next meal, lunch. That's three meals so far. After lunch, we have another 'I'm-hungry-can-we-eat-something?' meal, which we shortened to the very British 'afternoon tea'. This is the meal we decided to have after exploring some more of the ship after the drill. After the oh so lovely 'afternoon tea', it's dinner, which we had at a different restaurant, which works like...a restaurant. Well, meaning there's waiters, courses, and tons of cutlery (but sadly no buffet).
Anyways, that's enough about food...for now. Let's talk about the gym, to burn off some of that food. We went to the gym after our little tea and sandwiches, to try to prevent gaining too many pounds. In the introduction booklet, it said that the average person gains 1-2 pounds each day when on the cruise, so by the end of a week, someone could have gained more than 14 pounds (around 7kg). That's impressive, in a bad way. So we went up to the gym where there was basically everything. Treadmills, rowing machines, bicycles, weights, punch bag, even a large space for dancing or yoga or whatever. You name it, and it will probably be there.
I really can't stay off the topic of food for too long when basically all we did was eat food all day... Every day, dinner was in a different, more posh, restaurant. Our one was called 'The Oriental', and you weren't even allowed to wear jeans in there unless they were 'smart' ones. There's actually a funny story about my dad - he thought that the name of the restaurant 'The Oriental' meant that we would be having oriental based food every dinner. He's ok with that, he likes oriental stuff. However, after about four nights of eating foods that are not oriental at all, such as risotto, steak, and cheesecake, he still didn't realise that it wasn't oriental food. And when he did realise, he kept on denying it and saying how on the cover of the menu, it says 'oriental'. Oh daddy, you're such a numpty.
The dinner dress code, by the way, was different depending on whether it was formal, smart, or casual. Formal and smart dress dinners were basically ball gowns and cocktail dresses for ladies, and a suit and bow tie for men. Casual dinners were a dress or a smart two-piece for ladies, and for men, it was smart trousers and a shirt. On the first night, it was a casual dinner, so that we could get accustomed to it first. Although somehow, the allocated tables were mixed up, so we had to separate into a group of three and a pair. Myself and my friend went to one table, and on the other side of the restaurant, our parents were at another. It was so awkward though because we had come unfashionably late, so everyone was staring at my friend and me, two teenage girls, sitting at a table for two...yeah, a couple table. Oh well, it was fun in the end!
I've just realised I had written tons...I'll start finishing it now I promise before you all fall asleep on me. So after dinner, there's always a show in the Playhouse. On the first day, the theatre company which works with the cruises, the Headliners Theatre Company (HTC?!), put on a theatre show. There was singing and dancing to songs, the typical sort of production you would do if you were welcoming people onto a ship, which I think was the theme. Something about beginnings and adventures... Anyways, that was a great start, and it certainly made me want to go watch them again.
And that, my dearest peepsicles, was the end of the first day on the ship, but the beginning of a new adventure.
I love y'all, and goooooooodbye!
