So Jenny and I are off to take our cruise. For various reasons (not least that internet time onboard is something like $5 a minute), I am posting these after the fact. Pictures of the cruise are available here. The full list of cruise posts is available here.

Cruise: Day 1 (Embarkation at Galveston)

The day started with something of a panic (not that this is unusual in our travels; quite the opposite). We were supposed to drop the dogs off at Dog Boys Dog Ranch before driving to Galveston (which according to MapQuest and AAA was about 4 hours' drive) and embarking the ship (which had to be accomplished before 4pm). Unfortunately, we discovered yesterday night that Dog Boys does not open until 10am on Saturdays, which didn't leave us much time to get the dogs settled, drive through Houston (well known as a terrible town for traffic), get all our stuff onto the boat, etc. However, we arrived at Dog Boys at 9:30 to find that they had opened a little early, which was convenient for us. The dogs didn't even stop to say goodbye; as soon as the door to the Dog Boys backyard was opened, they were off with nary a backwards glance. This, too, is entirely normal. :)

So off we went, initially via about 20 miles of largely twisting, turning, tiny, unlabeled little country roads, to Galveston. About 45 minutes before Houston, we saw a sign for Panera--and, being as we don't have Panera in Austin, we pretty much had to stop. Unfortunately, we thought we were in a grand hurry, so we pretty much wolfed down our food. Still, it was quite tasty. We miss Panera.

As it turned out, we actually arrived earlier than we should have. For future reference, when Princess tells you that you are signed up for "express check-in", they actually mean "you will be standing in line with every other US citizen boarding this ship, sucker". This was the first hint that things would not always work out the way we had hoped or expected.

So after interminable boarding lines (these people could learn a thing or two from Disney World), we were on the boat. However, the day before, Princess had notified us that they had "upgraded" our cabin--rather than an interior cabin, we were now receiving an outer cabin (with a window and 8 more square feet of space). Unfortunately, while we got the message, nobody else actually on the ship did. Thus, for the entire week, nearly everything intended for our cabin (shore excursion tickets, sodas, bathrobes, Happy Birthday balloons) went to our old cabin, while nearly everything intended for the original inhabitants (a bottle of wine, their luggage, etc) was delivered to us (it wasn't even good wine; we sent it back ;). Which was, to put it mildly, not the best way to start our cruise (nor, for that matter, to end it).

Dinner was good. Make note of this, it will come up later.