Day 3: Heading to the Port

We woke up this morning to a beatiful sunrise on Daytona Beach (seen above!) We headed out from the Hilton around 9am down 95S to Ft. Lauderdale. Getting into Port Everglades was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. Mom loved going over the bridge on I295, here's a photo she took, while trying to keep her mind off the fact that we were driving over nothing but water. We arrived in Port at 1:15pm, which was when Carnival was supposed to start boarding the ship - but it was very delayed and we didn't end up getting on the ship until almost 4pm, which was supposed to be the sailing time! The delay was worth it though - the Barenaked Ladies were stopping each cabin as they boarded to greet them and take a full band picture with them!! I'll upload that one once I've scanned it.
When I booked the cruise back in April 2006 I figured that getting a stateroom higher up on the ship would be better than one lower, due to overall motion and engine noise (at least that was what I was lead to believe) so we were in cabin 8121 on the Promenade Deck.
Our stateroom was very, very small, but it did have a very nice balcony that looked fit both of us very comfortably and gave us some great views of the port as we were heading out to sea. The first night was spent exploring some of the decks and finding out where things were, we did manage to find the casino and even came out ahead for the evening. Although there were events on the ship, the drive and the long wait in line to board the ship took most of our energy, so we called it a night pretty early.