New Years Vacation Day 2 - Miami and Ship Boarding

We woke up to a very sunny and humid Miami morning and headed off to our free breakfast buffet which was delicious and filling. Since we were boarding the boat around lunchtime, we didn't know when the next time we would be eating would be so we made sure to fill our gas tanks!Since we didn't need to get on the boat until 1:30 PM (as per our instructions from the cruise line), we decided to do a bit of walking around South Beach.It was very pretty but different than I expected. The main drag seemed crowded and narrow and the beach was nice but nothing so different from some other great beaches I have been to. Granted, it was hot and we didn't walk too far but from what I saw, it wasn't anything so spectacular and different. It was nice to be walking in the shadow of the palm trees and taking in the humid heat. Jasmine was a little bucket of energy and seemed to really take it all in.We headed back to the hotel to get our car and it took an abnormally long time for the valet to bring it so we had to come up with some more games to entertain Jasmine with. She started posing in the hotel lobby and I took pictures of her and her daddy had her running around from one side of the lobby to the other.As we headed to downtown Miami in search of the Port where we would board our cruise, I got some fun pics of Miami from the car and we also encountered mad traffic as we neared the port. It literally took us about 45 minutes to go 3 miles. Crazy! It only got worse when we got to the port because there were several different cruise lines departing from the port and lots of cars and people and luggage to be sorted in order to leave. Lorne dropped off Jasmine and myself and the luggage at the drop off point and then we didn't see him for a little over an hour as he navigated the traffic to find parking and make his way back to us. Thank goodness I had brought the stroller so I didn't have to chase Jasmine all over the place. Also, thank goodness that the cruise line takes your bags aboard the ship so all we had to worry about was getting ourselves on.It took us another 30 minutes to get on the ship after you go through security (just like at the airport) and they check your documents and such. We ended up on the boat around 3:30 PM. It was a bit of a circus and during the time I was waiting for Lorne to come back from parking the car, I found out from one of the employees to never listen to the instructions they give you on the cruise packet. He said we were perfectly welcome to have arrived around 9 AM to begin the process. Had we known that we were allowed to do that, we would have! Since this was our first time, we didn't know to disregard the message that says not to arrive earlier than 1:30 PM.
We found our stateroom and quickly discovered that we were in our own little piece of heaven. The room was super cute and had more storage than we had anticipated. We also spent a few minutes rearranging the beds so that we could sleep in the same bed. Later, we found out that our stateroom attendant knew we had a child with us and she had separated the beds so she could bring a roll away bed in for her but since we brought our own cot, Jasmine was able to fit at the foot of our bed, no problem. The stateroom attendant loved this idea as well so she actually ended up remaking our bed into a queen bed so you couldn't even tell they were actually 2 separate beds. What a gem she was - our Gratiela (cool name huh?).We laid on the bed to relax and found out from a loud announcement that we were to meet at 4:30 PM for a boat emergency drill. We were supposed to don our life jackets and meet at our designated meeting place. Ours happened to be in the casino! Jasmine was a hit during the drill and she got to help the staff as they put us in lines and had us standing on the deck of the ship. What a funny girl - lately she has this thing about being the line leader everywhere she goes!After the drill, we headed down to the 4th deck to sign Jasmine up at the Fun Factory. This was the kids program the boat had for all the kids aboard. It really is an amazing program and the way to vacation. The regular program is free - included in the cost of the cruise - but for a small fee of $68, you can make your child a VIP, which means that your child gets to participate in 3 special activities and can stay for the any of the extra parties they had (for example, every night they did a party from 10 PM until 1 AM called the slumber party which enables the adults to participate in other activities on the boat, like the shows or Karaoke, etc.). The VIP kids also received a special backpack filled with goodies like a robe, a visor, a CD holder and a key chain. It was pretty neat and worth spending the extra money for. We enrolled Jas as a VIP.
After this little adventure, we went up to the pool on deck 11 to watch the ship leave port. We ordered some sodas and laid on the poolside chairs to drink in the good life.It was then time to dress for dinner. I loved this part of cruising because it is something we don't generally do this as a culture anymore. We were supposed to dress in business casual unless it was formal night and so we all dressed for dinner. We went to our assigned table - #580, at the restaurant and we sat down for an amazing 4 course dinner. They even had a special menu with a four course dinner for the kids. We were bombarded by meeting our staff that was there to serve us, our waiter, our assistant waiter, our maitre d', our bar lady (in charge of sodas as well as alcohol), and our sommeilier (whose services we never used as we do not drink wine). They treated us like royalty and the food was spectacular.After dinner, we dressed Jasmine in her PJs and took her to the Fun Factory for the first time so we could go to the show they had that night. She was super excited to go and they had activites for kids in her age group so she made lots of new friends.Since we had a little time before the show started, Lorne and I walked around the ship to explore it. We found it gets very dark at night on the sea and also windy! Also, when we went to the spa, Lorne wanted to treat me to a massage since I had been having a lot of back pain lately. They happened to have a spot open at that time so I jumped on it and Lorne went off to explore while I was treated to an amazing (an very oily) massage. It was definitely what I needed and afterwards, we had planned on meeting at the theatre.We went to the show and it was really good. The act that night was a man named Barry John who is a professional juggler and comedian. He was truly amazing to watch and very entertaining. I was really impressed by the quality of the show and Lorne and I had a great time together and it felt like we were on a date (which I guess we kinda were).We picked up a very energetic Jasmine after the show (at this point it was 11:30 PM) and settled her into her bed which had been put together by our amazing statroom atendant and we had chocolates on our pillows (which Jasmine LOVED - she kept trying to steal ours as well) and we fell into a deep sleep.