Deaprture Day - Sept 30

Sunday arrived - The day we embark on our 16 day ocean voyage to Australia!

We took the bus a mile down the road to Holy Family Catholic Church for mass.

After mass, we returned to the hotel, finished packing and boarded the transport bus that Pat & Judy had arranged.

As we approached the harbor, we caught our first glimpse of Spirit. By comparison to the mega ships being put in service, she is relatively small - 84,000 tons, 2,100 passengers, and 900 crew members. She is being repositioned to be home based in Sydney, Australia and will remain there for several years. Carnival Australia is a separate company and future Spirit cruises will not be booked by Carnival US!

The cruise terminal was immense with pretty Hawaiian girls giving leis and a Hawaiian band playing Island Music. But the line was still very, very long.

Bob's knees started to ache from the standing. Theresa noticed some seats and chairs scattered about and suggested Bob move to one of those while she held our place in line. Bill & Peggy and Pat & Judy are Carnival Platinum level guests and they were given head of the line privileges.

When we received our "Sign & Sail" cards, we entered the ship in the main atrium - a wonderful first impression!

We headed straight across the atrium to book shore excursions. Shore excursions fill up fast and we normally book these on line months ahead of time (in fact we had done just that). Then we learned our Carnival booking agent had figured out a way to re-book us, saving us nearly $1,000 in the process! Since we had already paid our final payment, we took the added money as "on-board credit." Unfortunately, the on-board credit can only be used on the ship itself. So Bob canceled the shore excursions and we "rolled the dice" hoping that we could book them as soon as we got on board. It worked and we were able to get every one we wanted! We had also learned that if we bought 100 shares of CCL (Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc) stock , we would receive an additional $250 on-board credit. By booking the excursions on board, we were able to eat that up completely!

We went to our cabin but our luggage was no where to be seen, so we went to the 9th deck to celebrate the sailing. We forgot to throw our leis in the water as we sailed, but since we are scheduled to fly back to Honolulu in November, we figured we already knew they would drift toward the shore!

As we clear the harbor, Honlulu recedes into the distance and Wikiki and Diamond Head come into view.

As we looked back towards Honolulu, a rainbow appeared which we took as a good sign!

After a quick shower (our luggage made it! Yay!) We headed to the Empire Dining Room with Peggy, Bill, Judy and Pat. We met and immediately fell in love with our Maitre De, Dessi. She is Bulgarian,has a Zza Zza Gabor accent, and is very funny and full of energy.

The decoration on Spirit varies throughout the ship and is Roman in the Empire Dining Room. We joked that Peggy had modeled for the the mural immediately above our table. Dinner time would prove to be one of our favorite times on the ship.

Following dinner, we strolled the ship and learned that there is evening music and dancing throughout the ship - here in the Atrium as well as several other venues.

And of course, a cruise wouldn't be the same without the towel animals!

Tomorrow - Life aboard a cruise ship!