Thanks John for encouraging me to keep writing!
This is just a small piece of my memory of that first day aboard.
Not much can be said about the voyage without talking about the ship.
It was raining in Seattle when we touched down. The six of us; me, Coll, Coll's mom, Matt, Brooke and Grace piled into a taxi van driven by a Sikh and headed along slippery roads toward the harbor. Freight vessels and giant iron cranes loomed about us. I pictured our ship sitting demurely among these behemoths of maritime industry like a little lady, trim and proper in her berth. Not so. The Noordam dwarfed much of the harbor and most of my imagination when we finally saw her (I'm going to go ahead and call the ship "her" for this post- Something that big should be engendered.) It was massive.
The ship is 951 feet long. She has something like 13 stories that sit out of the water. There are double glass elevators on both sides of the ship, giving it that complete Vegas feel. Two swimming pools, spas, a full fitness center, a casino, a nightclub, a balconied showroom, a tennis court and a half-basketball court. Fully loaded, she can take 2500 people on board, 800 of which are crew. You can attend Mass, Temple, AA meetings, detox workshops (all of which seemed a little ironic onboard).
We had already taken the virtual tour of our stateroom on the internet, but a small pop-up window on your laptop is no match for the full experience of your bed turned down, LCD television, nice couch, very nice bathroom and a window big enough for two adults to perch in. We had keycards for our room door with our names on them- all the amenities of a nice hotel.
Outside the door was a little rack that would be filled with notices, newspapers and advertisements on a daily basis.
This is just a small piece of my memory of that first day aboard.
