Back to reality

I have so much to say about the cruise!  I'm not sure if I will tell you all tonight because I am still not feeling well.  Yesterday morning, before we left the ship, I started getting sharp pains in my stomach on and off.  Unfortunately, I'm still getting them.  Let's start with day one.

I hardly slept at all going into Monday morning.  I set my alarm for 3:30 in the morning.  My friend was going to pick me up at a little after 4AM for our 6:05 flight.  I texted him at 3:30 making sure he had all of his papers.  It turned out that he forgot a room tag to put on his bag.  I printed that out.  We had no problem getting through the check in and security.  Once we got to Tampa, Florida, we went straight to baggage claim.  We got our luggage quickly and took a 15 minute taxi ride to the port area.  We got there before 11:30.  There was no line at all while we got our sail and sign cards.  Each time we walked past more Carnival workers, they had to check our IDs and S and S cards.  Then we got to a huge group of people.  We had zone 8.  We were waiting at that area at around 11:25 until they started calling people starting with zone 1 at 11:40.  We were on the ship by 12:15.  After we ate, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the sun.  Unfortunately, we had to do the mandatory muster drill before we started moving which took over a half hour.  We watched the boat leave the port.  While laying out in the sun, it was extremely windy.  After that we did the sit down dinner where we were in a booth that seats 6.  Only my friend and I were there that night.  We watched a Jeopardy contest once dinner was completed.  Three people went up.  They then had another three people go up and I was one of them.  The questions they asked were song and TV related.  They would play a sound bit and then we would have to answer.  Each question was worth 100 points and the first to 500 won.  I won!  My prize was a bottle of champagne and the famous 24 karat plastic ship on a stick.  Then we stayed in that room for a welcome show.  They showed us a sneak peek of the two comedians and the break dancers.  Then we went to a comedy show for adults only which was hilarious.  I still think comedy can be very funny without swearing.  As we were walking to get more food (yes, you can eat at all times) it was windy and rainy.  That was the only time it rained on the entire cruise.  After the comedy show, I walked around the club and casino but shockingly did not gamble.  I was amazed that I was able to stay up until about 12:30 since I was up at 3.  That's all for day 1.  I will talk about day two tomorrow.