adivineeternity

*melts her way back onto CC*

I didn't forget, NaNoWriMo destroyed me. And then I won anyway. My December writing project will be this monstrosity, and I don't mean my hair. Lemme just... Shower first... And maybe invent a permanently cold ice wrist brace pack thing for my carpal tunnel.

Turns out 20,000 words in a day is both possible and painful.

Thought u were posting tonigh <sigh>

Who said I'm not?

DAY ONE - 9/21 - Muster the energy

Strawberry gelato and blackberry sorbet. I have eaten heaven, people.

It’s important to note that I’m not saying that the Gelato was the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted in my life or that I will never taste anything quite so glorious for as long as I live. At that exact point in time, however, I could feel myself being spoiled rotten by my circumstances for the first time in years. The Gelato was very tasty and cool and fruity, all of which made me happy, and as I took my card back and James and I continued on our walk around the promenade, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. “I’m coming back here,” I told James. He nodded knowingly. Of course I was.

Once we ran out of deck space to wander (about 45 seconds later, much to our disappointment), we made our way back inside. Conveniently enough, we were right by the stairs. “Hey look! Stairs!”

See?

Maybe not; I didn’t take pictures.

We walked down to deck 7 and made our way aft, winding through the casino and taking in all of the a la carte dining options around us, like the sushi place and the noodle bar, neither of which we had plans to try at that time. We did, however, want to check out the casino during the week because while neither of us is a frequent gambler by any means, we have nothing against tossing a $20 bill in and trying our luck from time to time. We also found O’Sheehan’s, which I explained to James was very popular and complimentary, so I definitely wanted to eat there at some point. Once we got all the way aft, we looked at the stairs and figured we may as well continue down.

On deck 6, we walked past the Taste and Savour, at which point I told James that was where we had to go for muster drill. “What’s that?” He asked.

“Muster drill. If we don’t go today, they’ll interrupt us tomorrow and make us go then.”

“Oh. We don’t want that. Let’s make sure we go today.”

“Good idea. Hey babe, let’s not forget about muster drill today.” We made our way forward and finally found the bottom of the rather gorgeous atrium, which included this view:

“I love this chandelier.” Where did he go? I spoke to the air on that, as James had wandered off within seconds of me looking away from him to take the picture, but I found him by Le Bistro staring at… something. I’m still not sure what. “Babe! This place is awesome.”

“It is. When are we eating at Le Bistro again?”

“Tuesday night, I told you. Cagney’s tonight, La Cucina tomorrow, Le Bistro Tuesday. Then we’ll just eat on the island while we’re there since you mentioned wanting to.” Hahahaha… What a joke. I don’t know how many times I told James which nights we were eating at each restaurant, nor am I sure of how I kept it all straight in my head while I gazed around practically drooling on myself at everything, all of my senses overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the ship we were to live on for the next seven days.

“Which one is La Cucina again?” he asked, clearly struggling to keep all of our options organized in his head.

“Italian.” I imagine there was some hardcore eye-rolling going on at this point.

Once we got past the atrium we found ourselves near the reservation desk, so I decided to check on the times for the reservations I had made months before, namely Le Bistro. It took seconds and the young lady behind the desk was very nice as she helped us. This done, we walked further forward only to be faced with a choice. Mysterious hallways of fun and exploration or stairs.

Obviously, we took the stairs, because who wants to explore more hallways and find more things?

Venturing down these hallways led us to a rather glorious place, which we apparently promptly forgot about, the library. It was very small, but it did have a few books and a selection of puzzles that we could take and solve in our room later. We spent about five minutes in there enjoying how peaceful it was and I snapped a picture of the hours it would be open during the week, swearing I’d return for sure, and then we left and continued back toward the stairs and elevators. We looked at the signs and James suggested we go to deck 5.

“Deck 5? I think that’s all cabins,” I said rather simply.

“No, no, no… I’m sure there’s more there.”

“Okay, but I’m pretty sure it’s almost entirely cabins, judging by this list of things, none of which are on deck 5.”

So we went down the stairs and, sure enough, I was right. “Huh, maybe it is all cabins,” James admitted. “But at least we found the medical office. That’s important.”

“Yeah, especially for us.” You have to understand something about us. I’m clumsy, James is clumsier. We have the collective coordination of a llama on roller skates. Actually, the llama might be more coordinated. It is a true miracle we can walk down the stairs while holding hands, considering neither of us can walk across flat, level ground without tripping. “But let’s try not to go there, okay?”

He agreed and then asked what we should do. “Let’s go back up to our cabin and see if our suitcase is there,” I suggested, getting immediate agreement from him as we turned back toward the stairs. We figured the elevators would be an unpleasant experience at that point in time with all the people boarding the ship, so we were doing our best to avoid them. Those five decks weren’t too terrible, but once we got to deck 10 he realized where we were on the ship.

“F***! We’re all the way forward!” I nodded. “It’s gonna take forever to walk back to our cabin.” I shrugged. It didn’t seem all that bad. We began to walk aft, which only took a couple of minutes, and as we wound our way around the suitcases, I observed that if it wasn’t there yet, it would be soon. Once we got to our room, it was not there. We went in and chilled out for a bit, James mostly opting to take pictures on the balcony while I put away the things in our carry-on suitcase to start getting the room organized. Once this was done and James and I had both satisfied ourselves with the many opportunities the balcony’s view offered us, we sat down in the room and hung around until it was time to head downstairs for Muster Drill.

Muster for us was in the Taste dining room. We sat and talked to a couple from Dallas while we waited and the drill itself was quick and efficient. The highlight of it was James knocking down probably have the place settings when he took his seat because he didn’t realize that the lumpy tablecloth was lumpy because it had things under it.

After muster, we stopped by our cabin one last time before sail-away to check on our suitcase and use the restroom, then made our way up top for the sail-away party! It was finally time to leave New York City behind for a week and head for paradise!

Great news! My next post is written. I'll put the picture in and post when I get home tonight.

Okay, an update: I got a surprising amount written at work yesterday but wound up getting home later than I wanted after getting a rejection for a job I interviewed for. I'm writing more today and have a dentist appointment at 6. If I get through the rest of day one like I want to, I'll pop my pictures in and post tonight. If not, I'm hoping to post anyway but it might be tomorrow after work and a trip to the lab to get more tests done because we still don't know if the kidney infection is gone. There's a decent amount of pain, so the doctor is suspicious of the negative I got.

I'm here, I'm here! Try not to give up on me. I'm back at work, so time is limited. I've got my next post in the works on my screen to make it look like I'm working.

Boyfriend is leaving on a busines trip in a couple hours, so he won't be around to distract me.

My boyfriend and I got there around 9:45 am and were through security and checked in within 20 minutes. No lines or anything, plus we got to board in one of the first general boarding groups.

I can definitely recommend Bermuda. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been and my boyfriend and I have every intention of returning, most likely multiple times, by cruise ship and by plane for longer trips. The Breakaway is also an amazing ship if you choose to leave out of NYC. Just my two cents.

Thanks, guys. I've got my next post started. I am, fortunately, feeling much better. Out all day, but I'm going to see how quickly I can get more up.

OMG FINALLY! I'm back on MY laptop AND this is a real post. The second of a zillion because I'm realizing I might write too much.

DAY ONE - 9/21 - We’re Off to see the Wizard…

After some conversation, we noticed that some people were walking toward the ship. These people were carrying wedding things and we all watched as the wedding party, as we had figured them to be, made their way toward the ship. Once that finished, we turned back and talked more about the trip, who had cruised before, and whatever else came up.

Then we got confused. Someone may have potentially called boarding group 6, but we weren’t sure. So we all craned our necks to see if anybody was boarding, then stood up. Then sat down. Then decided “heck, we may as well stand up. If they’re not boarding us, they’ll turn us away.”

IT WAS TIME! Someone came over and ushered us out of our seating area, so we all gathered up our things and made our way to the podium we were directed to. I could already hear the music pumping from the ship as I handed over my key card to be scanned. I was surprised to learn that this was essentially it for checking in. “Wow,” commented le boyfriend extraordinaire, as he followed me outside and up the gangway. “That’s it? That was incredibly easy!”

There is an excellent chance I danced a little, as well. What can I say? I’d been dreaming about my first cruise for 17 years.

It all became very, very real and VERY, VERY good as I set foot onto the Breakaway and was greeted by smiling staff members. While we sat in the terminal, I had attempted to figure out if I could see our stateroom from where we were sitting, once someone pointed out deck 8 to us, and soon I would be finding out if I was right.

“So? That’s really it? What do we do now?” I looked over at James, aforementioned boyfriend, and shrugged. How should I know? Months of research on Cruise Critic hadn’t adequately prepared me for the moment I set foot on the ship and ticked something amazing off of my bucket list.

“I guess we just… find our room. Drop off our carry-ons. I don’t think it’ll be clean yet.” We walked over to the elevators, where we had a short wait, then got on and went up to the tenth deck. Within a few seconds of getting off the elevator, we were there, cabin 10876 - specifically chosen for it’s location on a deck sandwiched between cabin-only decks and near the elevators and stairs as well as its angled balcony - and before I could say a thing James was sliding his keycard into the reader and opening the door.

It was maybe 11:45 am and, much to our surprise, our room was clean and ready.

“Wow, this is small,” James remarked as we made our way into the cabin and the door shut behind us. “Really small.”

“Well, of course it is. How big did you think it’d be?”

“I know, I just didn’t realize how small 207 square feet would be.” And then he dropped his stuff on the couch and went straight onto the balcony. “OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWESOME, HUN!” I put my stuff down on the bed and stepped onto the balcony, which was larger than I expected, and immediately realized that I had guessed our stateroom correctly.

“Ha! This is the one I was pointing at from the terminal!”

“Oh is it?”

“Yup! Go me.”

I smiled at James and went back inside to grab my camera, wrestling with my skirt to make it fit a little better. We each grabbed a few shots from the balcony, then went back into the cabin. “Now what do we do?” James asked. I’m clearly the supreme know-it-all of the cruising world at this point.

“Well, you said in the terminal you were hungry. So we can probably go find a place to get lunch.”

“Yeah, I am. I think they said something about the pool deck. Which one is the pool deck?”

“Not a clue. Let’s just go up and see what we can find.” So we did. We made sure our bags were out of the way, in case a steward or anybody needed to go back in for anything, then went back to the elevators and got on one. My own theory was to press the button for the highest numbered deck possible, but this was already done for us. By the others on the elevator. “You guys hungry to? Cause we are and we’re off to look for food.” The others nodded and chuckled a bit and, within seconds, we were on deck 15. James and I got off and looked at each other. “We may as well follow the people who already said they’re hungry and looking for food.”

GOOD INSTINCTS. :-D

We followed them right into the Garden Cafe. Rather than take any amount of time to look at the options, I caved to the first thing I found: pot roast, potatoes, carrots, green beans, and mashed potatoes. And then I saw it.

Pretzels. Well, pretzel bread sticks. I NEEDED THEM.

“BABE. LOOK!” I showed him the treasure trove of absolute win. “PRETZELS.” This was, I think, the selling point for James, although he claims it was later in the day. Once we both had our meals (he had the same thing I did, but carved roast beef with gravy instead of pot roast), we found a table and ate our meal. The green beans, I must say, were DELICIOUS. I greatly enjoyed everything I ate, though, and the pretzel bread sticks were very yummy.

After lunch it was time to explore the ship from top to bottom. We made our way out to the pool deck and all the way forward:

I was falling in love with the ship more with every second and we both noted the ropes course we absolutely had to do. I also pointed out the slides. “See those? I’m doing them. All of them.”

Once we finished the upper decks, we made our way to deck 8, where the most exciting thing ever was waiting for us. I’m not there yet, so be patient.

We walked past all the different restaurants and everything, eventually finding our way to a sight I think more than one person will recognize:

I love this chandelier, by the way.

Once we finished looking around inside, we happened across doors to the wonderful that is the Waterfront. Ohhh, the Waterfront, site of good memories, great sunsets, and several of our delicious meals on the ship. And the most exciting thing ever?

“GELATO!”

Unknown... Boyfriend and I need money, first. :-(

As Donna said, I've got my next post in the works. ALL day one photos have been sorted, edited, and marked. They are ready to go. I have the first bit of the post written, finally. I was going to post tonight, but the photos I just spent all day on took a very long time, partially because I was distracted. I am off of work all week, so I'm trying to get through some of my creative endeavors, such as these photos, this review, and my prep for NaNoWriMo (if you don't know what that is, google is your friend). I'm also looking for a new job this week.

Tomorrow, however, WILL include at least one post for this review, some photos, and hopefully the bulk of, if not all, the sorting for day 2.

As I write this, it is after midnight and I am in some pain again. I bid you all adieu.

This post is dedicated to GIMP, which I stupidly did not realize can be run from an external hard drive, and RAW Therapee, which I didn't know existed. I can edit photos on the laptop, guys! Let's see if I can crank out a post today.

I hope you feel better soon! Take care of yourself, the review can always wait.

 

Cherie

I hope so, too, Cherie. If I had my laptop, this wouldn't even be an issue. But I've only been able to use James's work laptop at night, although we've both been ignoring computers lately. His laptop also has no way to edit photos, so I'd need to be able to sit up at his desk to get the photos done. I really want to include photos for you guys.

I'm off to West Point for football tomorrow, but with any luck that won't aggravate things and I'll be able to edit photos and get at least one post up before the week starts. If the guy fixing my laptop is there tomorrow, I am gonna check in with him to see how it's coming along. But I promise, I have big plans for this review, and have for a few months now.

I hope I am wrong but its been more than 10 days, I am beginning to believe there wont be a review.:confused:

Don't worry, you're wrong. I have a kidney infection. Today was the first day I could sit up properly for more than five minutes without considerable pain.

Just a brief update to let you know I haven't forgotten about this review by any means. October is just proving to be a bad month already. It's the end of day 6 and I've already had an ER visit. I'm also still waiting to hear back on my laptop and when I'll have it back. Meanwhile, I'm going to work on getting pictures ready for the next segment of my review. I might put off doing work tomorrow in favor of this... It's tempting.

Taken from the Norwegian Breakaway en route to Bermuda September 21. I want to say it was the Celebrity Summit.

Awesome! Enjoy that balcony!

I was in 10876 last week. Right next to the aft elevators and stairs, so we had super easy access to everything. Our balcony was definitely much bigger and we frequently had the tripod set up to take pictures. Tripod, two chairs, mini table, and two people with cameras all fit with room for another tripod if we owned one. We both really loved our cabin.

96 days until we board the breakaway! Excited to read your review!

L

Hehe, thanks. My laptop had to be taken for repairs, so sharing BF's desktop and thus photoshop access until I get it back. I'd prefer not to write too much without pics, but will if it comes to that.

It depended on the night, what we did during the day, and the next day's activities and desired wake-up time for us last week. Some nights we were out by 10 or 10:30, others we stayed up until midnight. Neither of us had any interest in the late night parties, we just enjoyed sitting on our balcony with a book, tea, and each other.

And no, we are not 70-somethings. We just act like it sometimes. We like our peace and quiet, both of which we found plenty of during the cruise.

Ahhhh! ! ! The New York State of Mind. ;)

Haha, right? I'm not a native, but my boyfriend is and he can get very impatient (although he was very polite about it on Sunday). He walked down, asked if we could just leave, then went back up to deck 15 to help me haul our stuff down and off the ship. As we were walking down the gangway, they called the next three colors.

That's too bad, Sabellagirl. I just got back from my first cruise and a week in Bermuda on the Breakaway and I can see why you love it so much. I'm writing up a very lengthy review/story of the cruise because I want to remember and relive it in as much detail as possible.

NCL could have tried but they never know when the'll get the all clear from immigration. Once NCL realized that there would be a wait perhaps they could have sent everyone to a designated area to sit comfortably until the ship was cleared by immigration. Sounds good but lets say they do that and shortly after that immigrations clears the ship, there would be people coming and going in all different directions, more than likely with luggage as they are among the first to disembark.. Im pretty sure that NCL stopped calling colors once the line became long. Trying to figure out what else they could have done.

Once the first group was called for people getting their stuff off themselves, no colors were called for quite a long time (over an hour, I think). They didn't call the first two colors until nearly 10, and then the next set didn't get called until around 11:30. I hate to think of how late I would have gotten off had we waited for our purple group to be called rather than going down when there was nobody downstairs and walking off.

Would it be Possible to stay in the public areas to relax instead of throwing oneself into the chaos ?

There were places open that people were sitting and relaxing. We sat on desk 15 in the Garden Cafe after we finished eating and read and talked while we waited.

(don't say I didn't warn you about the length of this)

DAY ONE - 9/21 - Journey to Platform 9 ¾… I mean, the Manhattan Cruise Ship Terminal

Our alarms went off entirely too early (hahahahaha… hilarious, as we would find out) at about 6:30 AM on Sunday morning. Naturally, we stayed in bed until 7. By 7:15 AM, James was in the shower or something and I was making us some bacon and eggs because BREAKFAST! We still had a handful of random oddities and nonsense to stuff into the suitcases, but we were also not being picked up for another two hours. Finishing that up could wait until after we’d determined that we weren’t actually all that hungry, although I at least finished my eggs. We stared at the news for a few minutes - please never ask me what the stories being covered were, I have no clue - then I got up to see what kind of fun it would be to fit my pillow into the larger suitcase that probably already weighed 65 lbs. My pillow easily weighs in the 10-15 lb. range because it’s special enough for the short bus I belong on at that hour. Once everything was packed up and we’d determined we could do nothing else useful with the remaining 45 minutes, we wound up back on the couch, staring at what was now a blank TV, as I’d stolen the power strip to pack it.

MOMMY DEAREST! HURRAY! Le boyfriend had requested his mother come pick us up, which meant his mom and her boyfriend arrived right about 9:00. We all sat around, potentially with some early morning senseless drooling from yours truly, for about 15 minutes before we grabbed everything and tried to wrestle ye olde behemoth out the door. Well, BF did that. I somehow got stuck with every. other. bag. Five of them, including my purse. Once everything was in the off, power-wise, and the apartment locked up, we loaded into the car and settled in for our horrifically long 30-minute drive to the terminal.

Awful, I know. How did we ever survive in the minimal traffic?

At some point I pulled out my camera and shot some video, which may or may not be useable, I’m a little afraid to find out, but it all stopped when we got our first site of “OMG IS THAT OUR SHIP? IT’S MUCH SMALLER THAN I EXPECTED!”

Oh. Wait. NOPE. That says Aida on it. Ours is the one behind it, totally dwarfing it in every way. HELLOOOO GIGANDO-SHIP! Silly duck, thinking our ship could possibly be that puny.

We were off-loaded out of the car by about 9:45 AM, 15 minutes earlier than I thought we needed to be there, and BF was already asking why we had gotten up so early. “Because, this place will be packed and the lines will be long. You hate long lines and large crowds, remember?”

“Yes, but-”

“You HATE long lines. Do you see long lines here? No? C’mon. I have no clue where to go from here.”

Fortunately, about ten seconds later a porter walked up to us and asked if we were checking in. NOPE! We’re gonna pitch a tent right here and camp for a week. He took the godzilla-case from us and I was finally relieved of some of the five bags I’d once again been coerced into dragging around and directed us inside. A mob of people promptly walked in front of us, blocking the entrance, but once they cleared off, we made our way inside and I immediately turned to look at BF. “See? No lines.”

This was true. There was one person going through security in front of us and he was gone by the time we got to the desk. Security was a complete breeze, by the way, and check-in continued just as easily, minus the ten seconds of panic as someone in the terminal decided to act like we’d missed every step ever just to mess with us. Health forms were completed, the non-lines were not stood in, and by 10:05 we were seated and in boarding group 6.

The worst part of the entire process was the hour and a half wait we had to get on the cruise ship, but even that was fine once we started talking to the people around us and gave up on doing productive things like taking pictures of lightbulbs and lifeboats.

Le boyfriend continued to complain on and off about why we got there so early, until 11:00 hit and I pointed at the check-in line. “You hate long lines, babe.”

“Yeah. I do. I’m really glad we got here when we did. How much longer until we can board? I’m starving.”