Getting on the Ship

Well, here we are at the ship. The Grandeur of The Seas is the ship from the Royal Carribean lines. Over 2,000 guests populate the ship with 1,300 crew members. On our 5 day cruise, they served over 50,000 meals. From this picture you can see our cabin level. The double windows on the bottom are on deck 2, which was our deck. We were on the opposite side of the ship toward the front. We were able to watch as the waves rushed by our window while were at sea. We started the voyage during a full moon, so we were able to watch the waves every night and our cabin was lit by the 'light of the moon' as our night light.


Here's a picture that shows us on the bow of the ship with one of those cheesy pictures where I hold the camera out at arm's length and say smile. She did, I did and snap, the rest is history (which is what I will be when mom sees this un-approved photo).


The ship disembarqued at 5 p.m. and took til dark to clear Tampa Bay and find us out at sea. The sunset therefore is over the St. Petersburg penninsula.


While the ship continued out into the open water, we went to dinner, which for us was the 2nd seating, at 8:30 pm.




To get to dinner, we had to go to deck 4 to the Great Gatsby Dining room. It actually covered 2 decks with a balcony. This is the 'Centrum' which is an open area from deck 4 through deck 8. The man in the wheelchair is on deck 5. The administrative offices of the Purser, the photographer, the excursions office, the cruise sales office, the library, computer area, card and game rooms, Ben & Jerry's/Starbucks, dance band and dance floor all face this Centrum area.



While we were at dinner, the captain (who was from Sweden) announced that we would soon be at sea and that the seas were at 7 feet. When I stood to leave dinner, I almost fell over from a swell that came on. We were beat from the day and took an early night, plus I was feeling queezy. One more picture from the evening from the 10th deck near the bow. What you see is the communications and radar sweeps.