Bless Your Heart

Today we are going on another Virgin Voyages cruise on the Resilient Lady!!! This cruise we booked over a year and a half ago, wayyyyy before I won our last Virgin cruise! Yesterday we set off from home to West Palm Beach. We stopped at Buc-ee’s (natch) in Brunswick, GA for lunch.

The only problem with Buc-ee’s is that you have to eat in your car because they don’t have tables. We finally made it to our hotel in West Palm Beach, FL after an uneventful drive. We stayed at the Homewood Suites by Hilton. LARGE room, very clean.

This morning we woke up, had our free breakfast at the hotel, then got gas before hitting the road for Port Miami!

These birds at the gas station cracked me up! SO unbothered.

Our port arrival time was 2:45 PM. We arrived at about 2:00 PM and found our parking spot. We were so excited for this cruise!

We walked over to the terminal from the parking garage at about 2:20 PM and found that they were already letting our boarding group get on the ship. Embarkation was easy peasy and quick. We were walking down the gangway to the ship when I spotted Adam the Spark. Virgin ships don’t have cruise directors like most cruise ships do. They have the Happenings Cast instead- a group of people with different specialties who lead the sailors in activities all around the ship. Adam the Spark hosted most of the trivia tournaments on our last cruise. Anyway, I was about to board the ship and Adam was greeting the sailors. He saw me and yelled “She’s back! It’s my gorgeous girl with the purple hair!!!” I couldn’t believe he remembered me! We had only had one conversation on our last cruise! Apparently I’m famous! LOL

After boarding we went straight to our room, 10102Z, to drop our carryon bags. I had a surprise for CSP. I hadn’t told him that I’d booked us a special room with a larger balcony (without having to pay more!). It’s all because of the way the ship is designed that 10102Z’s balcony juts out a bit at an angle, providing us with a good deal more room out there than the standard Sea Terrace room.

Here is a full tour of the room (don’t worry, it’s still just a couple minutes long) :

As soon as we dropped our bags, our room steward Roel came by to introduce himself. SO nice! I took pictures of the room and filmed the above tour. BTW, this time around I found the included hair dryer! It is in a black bag on the black shelf in the black closet. No wonder I missed it last cruise! It’s a wee travel hair dryer though, so if you need more power than a stiff breeze to dry your hair, I suggest bringing your own!

We watched the safety video,

then we opened the door to go check in at our muster station and found our luggage had been delivered that quickly!!! So efficient! We brought our suitcases inside then checked in at our muster station. We got our free coffee drinks from the Grounds Club on deck 7 then decided to skip the Galley for lunch and went to the Pizza Place instead.

We chose to split the Pretty Fly for a White Pie pizza. Look at how much red pepper CSP topped his half with!!! I don’t know how he has any tastebuds left!!!

After lunch we went back to our room to unpack and set up the room for the week. We bring magnetic hooks to attach to the walls for extra storage, and we had to set up our CPAP machines.

My mom called as we were unpacking, so I chatted with her and Hale while CSP talked to his parents from the balcony.

We set sail at 5 PM and we watched sail away from our balcony.

Just like our last cruise, we sailed past MSC’s World America.

In the above video you can hear our neighbors, who were from NY and were v vocal! LOL

Miami is not our favorite port, but she sure does have a gorgeous sky line!

I took advantage of the large balcony and hopped into the hammock.

I knew CSP would be occupying that hammock the rest of the week so I had to sneak in some time in it while I could!

It was now time to get dressed and freshen up for dinner and our show.

Next up- Persephone and dinner!