Alaska Trip Day 2 - Getting on Ship & Setting Sail

Day 2 got off to a slow start. We enjoyed a a leisurely morning waiting to get on board our ship. We ate breakfast at the hotel and then played some games before leaving for the docks. The lines were really long when we got to the ship. It took a while to get through customs and get on board. We had a couple of crazy kids by that point!! But we finally were able to get on the ship!! It was beautiful!! We were on the Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas. It is in their Radiance class of ships. It was perfect for Alaska because they had tons of windows everywhere. Great views!

We were all ready for some lunch so we headed up to the Windjammer for our first buffet!! The kids loved it of course.

The funnest thing was a guy asking my brother if you had to pay for the food. When my brother told him no he said, "must be a first day thing." It cracked us up! That guy was in for a shock when he learned all the food was free!!

We had a beautiful view of Vancouver as we ate our lunch!

First family picture on ship! We headed down to our room to get unpacked! Now one thing about cruise ships is that the cabins are small!!! A little over 400 square feet for a family of 4 with lots of luggage is not much! But we made the best of it. Found spaces for everything and made it work!

The bathroom is tiny as well!! you can barely turn around in the shower. But it is doable!

One of the best things was that we had a balcony off our room. That gave us some extra space to spread out and also to enjoy the gorgeous views. We had 3 cabins all in a row so it was also fun to talk over the balconies to each other!

Here is a map of the route we took on the cruise.

After getting settled in Kate took a nap and the boys explored the ship. It is always so much fun to check out all the different things on ships and to plan out what fun things to do! This is a shot of the centrum on the ship!

Then it was on to dinner. Really I think these blog posts are going to be alot about eating. We had some issues with our dinner reservations but they got sorted out eventually. This is the Cascades dinning room.

Our table for the week with our server Nengah (said like ninja) and our assistant Pedro!

First dinner!! We were a little worried about how the kids would do at dinner each night. 2 hour long dinners are hard for kids but they did awesome!! They actually enjoyed it each night. Ben says his favorite part of the trip were the dinners.

We set sail during dinner so after dinner we went to one of our favorite places - the Colony Club to check out the ship sailing!

The kids hanging over the windows scared me to death. My big fear was one of the falling overboard. I knew it was not going to happen but I was still scared!!
We then went to the Welcome Aboard Show which we all enjoyed. There was a juggler/comedian that the kids liked. There was also dancing which Kate loved!

We had a good day getting settled into our home for the next 7 days! A day at sea is to come...