Pictures of Clayton and me boarding the "Vision of the Seas" on Friday, February 9, 2001


On with my diary---
Friday, February 9, 2001---We met with the Immigration Officials at the hotel at 10:00 am. We had to show our documents and passports in order to board the ship. We got our Supercards when we checked in to go on the ship. A Supercard is what you use for everything on the ship. They use your credit card and total up everything you spend and you get a statement of your charges on the last day. The Supercard is also your room key. At the very end of the cruise you do have to pay the tips in cash. You don't pay any tips until the end of your cruise.
We got to board the ship at 11:00am. Our ship is "Vision of the Seas". It is one of the newer ships in the Royal Caribbean Line. I think someone said it was 3 years old. It is 915 ft. in length. The passenger capacity is 2,435. Total crew is 765. It weighs 78,491 tons. That is a lot of weight.
When Clayton, Darrell and I went to Ketchikan shortly after we were married to visit David and Debby, we used to go down to the pier and stare at those huge cruise ships that come in there. I had not the slightest idea that we would ever one day be on one.
The ship is not scheduled to depart until 5:30pm, but we were allowed on early so we could have lunch and find our cabins. We had lunch at 11:30 and our cabins were going to be ready by noon. We ended up not departing until 6 pm because some of the luggage had not gotten on the ship. It took most of the afternoon, but we finally all got our luggage except one of Laif's bags came up missing. It was the one that had his swim trunks and other essentials.
We had a great dinner. After dinner we went to the Masquerade Theater for a live show. There is a different show every night. It was 11pm before I finally got in bed. I am getting wild in my old age. Clayton and I slept good. It got up to 80 degrees this afternoon. Just unbelievable. Sun! Sun! Sun! It is hard to remember that it is really February.