This morning I am flying to Miami on my favorite airline (United). Yes you do detect sarcasm in my typing.
The flight actually left on time, shocking, I know. I took a picture of the Marriott hotel at the airport during the magic hour.
Luckily the plane wasn’t full, so I had an empty seat next to me, Plus extra leg room from the exit row – and the people in front of me have restrictions on how much they can recline.
The flight was uneventful, which is usually the best you can hope for nowadays. I didn’t look out the window much; I chose to watch a movie instead.
After I landed and retrieved my bag from baggage claim, I took an Uber to the port. It was almost more expensive to take the bus transfer from Norwegian, so it definitely made sense to have the personalized transportation to the cruise terminal.
This was the first time I was boarding a Norwegian cruise from their terminal… usually I am on much more exotic cruises than just the Caribbean, so after dropping my luggage (I pulled out my tripod first) I took a few pictures before entering the terminal.
If you couldn’t tell from the sign – this was a full ship charter by Sixthman with a list of bands that were scheduled to give concerts, including 311 (only in Miami while still docked).
More details on the history of Sixthman:
Security was easy, and there wasn’t a long line to get my key card to board.
They had already started boarding the first to arrive – I got boarding group 13.
I also got a fancy paper showing the ship and where the concert venues would be.
And a nice card with the concert schedule for each day.
I used the free time to get some photos of the cruise terminal and the small museum they have in the terminal, which featured some models of the ships.
They call group 13 and I head to the ship…
I’m on the ship, just around noon. They have the screens with the custom graphics. And big stickers in the elevator with the map.
Seeing as how it was noon, that means it was time for lunch. Rather than head to the buffet where all the other vultures would be, I decided to go to O’Sheehan’s for lunch.
I decided to go with Fish & Chips… those are usually good.
There was a Freestyle Daily which covered some of the activities.
I wandered around the ship a little, but I was on this same ship two years ago in Alaska, so I was familiar with it.
I took a couple of pictures of Miami from the back of the ship.
They made an announcement that the cabins were ready, so I went up and dropped off my things.
With two single beds it actually seems large. When you push them together, the room feels small. You can see that this room even has a 3rd bed on the wall.
The bathroom seemed like a nice size and looked nice despite the lipstick they put on the pig. No, that is not actual marble on the shower walls… just marble colored wallpaper.
According to the schedule, it was time for the 311 concert on the pool deck
I found a nice spot on the to deck to watch the concert from. Unlike normal concerts you don’t have to pay extra to get into the mosh pit. You could stand anywhere you wanted to. Of course they made it very clear in the emails before the cruise not to take long recordings of the concerts, or to record audio, no professional cameras, etc. I just used my phone to take a few pictures and videos.
As you can see 311 played through the magic hour, which means the sailaway would be at night.
I had dinner in the Main Dining Room.
I started with the French onion soup
For my main I decided to try the ribs. They were okay, but nothing special.
For dessert, I couldn’t pass up the creme brulee.
Here’s the rest of today’s schedule:
I went to the back of the ship for the sailaway, I recorded a video with my phone since I thought it would be too dark to use the good camera.
It was actually quite nice seeing the cruise terminals lit up. The Norwegian terminal was towards the end so we only passed the Royal Caribbean and MSC cruise terminals.
And just like that, 10 minutes later we were out at sea in the inky blackness.
I watched another band perform on the pool deck stage….
And briefly listended to another band in the theater – which they converted the first few rows into standing room… They had to put some bars up to keep people from tripping on the steps.
I was a bit hungry so I went back to O’Sheehans to try some late night food.
The chili was actually pretty good – the wings were not so great. They don’t fry the wings, so they aren’t crispy.
Back in the cabin I got a message saying I was going to lose an hour tonight. Not fun. At least tomorrow is a sea day (with more music).
