Sunday, October 12, 2025
Embarkation Day
Miami, Florida
After having only four beers during my "Embarkation Eve" celebration the night before, I woke up at 3am with the dry-heaves, a big ol' headache and incredible heartburn. Yep, a full-out banger of a hangover -- from four beers! I'm such a lightweight nowadays. I tried to get more sleep but couldn't, so with only a few hours of sleep, a Pepcid, a Tylenol and a small palmful of Tums, I mustered through my morning prep and eventually set forth before dawn on my long drive to Miami at 6:30am.
Tired, grouchy, in some degree of pain and before long, in fact, before I even hit Lake Placid, I'd add "yet again disappointed" to the mix...the amber light of tire pressure warning, AGAIN! How many long trips has this car done this to me? Of course it's just a false alarm as the tires checked out fine but man is this car super-sensitive about its tire pressure. I can't believe Hulk leaves me hanging like this!
Made my times to the parking place and then on to the cruise terminal fine. Through the boarding procedure without much hassle (not flawless, but not bad...this new terminal is very spacious and sparkly-new) and once on-board, a few glances around confirmed what I'd already known from my booking info, this ship is indeed a virtual twin of last year's ship, the MSC Seashore. Good aspect of that, I already should know my way around pretty much. Bad aspect of that, I already know my way around (less newness and discovery).
I endeavored to savor the little hidden "private" spots around the ship though as they were, as you might imagine on a vessel with over 6,000 people onboard, kind of rare.
Had my first drink of the voyage: a frozen Mango Margarita at the bar of HOLA! the Mexican cuisine upcharge restaurant. First sip was a doosy, but then soon realized it was just the floater shot on top. The rest was kind of a flavorless slushy. Thus would be the tone of my entire drinking experience on this cruise...Meh. Wait 'till you get a load of how many drinks I had for the whole cruise in total.
My steward met me after the announcement had been made that the rooms were ready after 2:30pm. It was shortly before three, I was near my bed and, wanting to peel out of my sweaty travel clothes I was naked except for skin-tight nylon Reebok boxer-briefs. Now if the door had been cracked open, I'd have politely asked him to wait a second but to my surprise, he was going balcony-to-balcony by way of the connector passage for each in order to swab the decks since they had puddles as it had rained in the morning and I had already opened up my sliding glass door wide. He apologized but I wasn't embarrassed. It broke the ice quite readily. He later took the time that afternoon (once I was actually dressed) to introduce himself. He said his name was Hamesi and he was from Kenya. He was certainly nicer than the previous two stewards that I'd had with MSC, but still nowhere near as obsequious as stewards on other lines in my experience, which is just as well since I don't trust fake suck-ups at all.
I ate a small lunch of tilapia, sweet and sour pork bits, Creole rice (I think Zataran's or very much like it), pasta carbonara with bacon and, of course, their awesome pepperoni pizza late and skipped dinner. Of course, like most of my cruises, I avoided the dining room entirely the whole cruise.
Check out this "Bridge Cam" view available on one of the TV channels.
We were the last ship out of port, I think. They're tearing down the terminal that MSC used to use, the one I embarked from in 2019, since they now have the shiny new one.
Despite being extremely tired, I did make it to the 7:30 showing of the theatrical performance called ImagineOcean, or something like that. Hey, this was really quite good!
Right to bed after the show and didn't take long to fall asleep as the day was a bit blustery and the seas of the Florida Straits did not disappoint in their lovely choppiness! I love to be rocked. Wasn't as strong as last year but it was good enough.