In order to squeeze every ounce of fun out of the cruise we decided to get on the ship, Celebrity’s Silhouette, as early as possible. To that end we took the first hotel shuttle at 10:30. It was an uncomplicated ten minute ride from the hotel to Port Everglades. Easy breezy! Check in was a snap and we were on the ship in record time. We headed straight for lunch (delicious) in the dining room. We had access to our staterooms by the time we finished eating. No luggage yet but access meant we could drop off a few carry-on things and check out our digs for the next week. Our rooms are next to each other, so it’ll be easy to talk from the balconies or pop back and forth like friendly neighbors.

Surprise of the day: our ship has a godmother.
Michelle Morgan to be exact. Who knew?

We spent our afternoon in the small library selecting tours for the four ports. We booked our choices, participated in the mandatory emergency drill, saw a tiny bit of the ship, inaugurated our nightly cocktail hour where we exercised our beverage package to its fullest, enjoyed a four course dinner, and ended our day at the entertainment which we enjoyed a lot. Dan Grueter, a comedian, had us and 1,300 of our new cruise buddies laughing for just under an hour.

Total cruisers: 2,914 from 37 countries.
Over half are from the U.S.; a third from Canada.

Crew: 1,273 from 63 countries.

We said our good nights around 10:30 with the plan to sleep as long as we could and meet tomorrow at noon if we did not run into each other around the ship before then. We all agreed we’d had a wonderful first day.