World Cruise - Day 1 - Fort Lauderdale

So we’re actually onboard.  This cruise is real!

I’ve had a world cruise on my goal list for a long time, I just thought it would be something that would be really, really late to complete.  I’ve had a goal list since 1977, when I put down my first goal—to get accepted to Notre Dame.  I was accepted two years later (on my third try) and then I started adding more stuff.  Go skydiving (did that in 1981, my second goal accomplished).  Get baptized.  1983.  Get married to a sweet girl.  1984.  And so the list grew over the years.  It’s now about 8 pages long and has about 3 pages of stuff completed.  Still lots of stuff to go.  One is this world cruise.  I know now most people call this a “bucket list” but for me, it’s more about setting goals and completing them.  That doesn’t mean I’ve completed all of my goals, I haven’t.  But I do know I’ve been able to accomplish so much more just by having goals.

So let’s take a look around the ship.  I’ll try to give you a different view each day for the next several days of different areas of the ship.  Here is the top deck as we prepared for sailaway:

There is a nice pool in the center with two whirlpools on either side.  Pool deck is deck 9 and we are on deck 10 at the edge of the walking track.

Krissie and I are on deck 11 (top deck) with Fort Lauderdale in the background as we sailaway on our journey.

Krissie along with four of our friends from CruiseCritic.com (an online cruise forum).  Ken is on the left and his wife Sara is on the right.  They are our tablemates for dinner and this is their third world cruise in a row.  Noemi and Sergio are the other couple, they are also repeat world cruisers.  We’re the pups in the group.

A couple of shots of the sunset with Miami Beach in the background.

I liked the cloud formation over the city as it neared sunset.  Reminds me of the old adage that “every cloud has a silver lining.”

One thing I am doing differently with this blog entry is trying to resize the pics a little larger.  This also increases the amount of time it takes to send an e-mail, so this is an experiments for today to see how fast the Internet connection is onboard.  It is a satellite connection, which can be rather slow at times.  If this e-mail gets sent in a relatively quick amount of time, I will keep sizing at this level, then you can click on the pic to get a bigger photo if you want to see the pic in more detail.  Otherwise, I may have to revert back to the smaller pic size for speed of sending.