The kids were a little bummed about not getting to swim in the hotel pool the night we got to Seattle, so we were nice and let them swim first thing in the morning since we didn't have to be to the ship until noon to check in. They loved it, as usual.
As we were getting into the shuttle to go from the parking garage to the ship, Malinda checked (for the 87th time) to make sure we had our passports. They weren't in the manila envelope that they had been in since we left home the day before. After several panicked minutes of frantic searching through all of our baggage, we found them in the van between the driver and passenger seats. Apparently the envelope was left open between when we left the hotel and arrived at the parking garage (by who is still a mystery) and it had been turned over at some point and the passports slid right out. That was certainly not a very pleasant way to start the trip. At least we discovered they were missing before we were in line ready to get on the ship!
We were really excited to get to our state room on the Pearl. It was small, but really nice.
Aunt Holly had joked about making the kids wear their life jackets the whole time on the ship, so Malinda sent her a text message with a photo of the kids with the huge emergency life jackets on.
I didn't know if it would be easy to know where the ship was (it was since they had a ship information channel on the TV in our room), so I took our GPS. It turned out to be helpful at times when we weren't in our room. Too bad I couldn't change the car icon to a boat...
Before we even left port, they opened up the restaurants. We headed straight up to the Garden Cafe for some late lunch. The convenience of eating buffet style practically anytime during the day suited us well, and we ended up eating there for about 95% of our meals ("Washy washy! Happy happy!").
Abby was an ice cream monster. She probably ate her body weight in ice cream during the week we were on the ship. I don't think she missed a chance to have a bowl or two (or three) of ice cream. It was probably a good thing that the ice cream bar wasn't open during breakfast hours.
The view from the ship as we pulled out of port.
One amazing thing about our 10 days in the Northwest is that we only had one day when it sprinkled for an hour or two, just as we were leaving Seattle. The whole rest of the trip was completely dry, practically unheard of for Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. Here we are on the damp top deck as the ship left port. If you look closely you can see the Space Needle poking out over the wall behind Ben.
Four cuties keeping out of the rain...
We were so excited to get to swim on the ship that after eating, we changed and went right up to deck 12 and headed to the hot tub. We were all a little (or a lot) bummed that the ship didn't have a big waterslide anymore. We had seen many online photos of the ship with a big, curly yellow waterslide, but they apparently removed it just months before our cruise (Boo!). With the light rain, getting in the pool didn't sound like too much fun, but the hot tub was delightful. Too bad we didn't pay attention about the mandatory safety briefing. We only ended up staying for about 1/2 hour before they kicked us out and we had to go down to the Stardust Theater in our swimsuits to hear the one-minute-long briefing.
In the evening after dinner we went to the introductory evening show that highlighted all of the main evening shows that they would have throughout the week. It was a pretty great first day on the Norwegian Pearl.
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