Spectrum of the Seas - Maiden Voyage!

Today was pretty simple really. Get up, throw everything in a suitcase, have breakfast, then call a taxi to take us to the cruise ship.

The taxi ride took about 15 minutes and was our last glimpse of many Barcelona landmarks. Taxis are allowed to use bus lanes so we made quick progress through the city at around 10:30am.

We'd had 5 days of glorious weather in Barcelona, not too hot and not too cold, but today it was more cloudy so the thought of spending the rest of the day on the cruise ship wasn't a problem.

Our ship is brand new, only commissioned about a week before, and we are the first paying passengers on board. We will spend the next 4 weeks travelling down to Singapore.

Of course, the ship is ultra-modern and everything is shiny and new, so I don't have enough superlatives to describe her.

We boardard about 11am, the onboarding process was very quick, however our room would not be ready until about 1pm and bags not delivered until about 4pm. One of Helen's bags was impounded. Funny, she had two suitcases. One contained a brand new sewing machine, that was delivered to the room OK. The other contained a power strip, this was not allowed on board because "appliances can cause a fire". We complained, moaned and groaned but the answer was a firm "no" and so we're short of New Zealand power points for our large collection of gadgets.

There have been a few teething problems, the air conditioning wasn't working in our cabin. We didn't sail until nearly midnight, and around 9pm-10pm our cabin was at 24 degrees. Eventually the identified our cabin had a faulty fan unit (dead on arrival?). It was replaced and now our cabin is a nice temperature. Also we have noticed the glass pads that contain buttons to call escalators are fragile, two shattered on the first day. There have been workmen in overalls here and there doing odd jobs, but overall it's been amazingly good.

Here'a s few photos of our cabin...

And a few random photos from around the ship...

We sailed near midnight, the ship just quietly pulled out from the wharf and off we went, so smooth we didn't feel her move, we just noticed the nearly container ports moving by our window. And now we're at sea for all of tomorrow.

From now on, internet connectivity will get patchy and so the blog will become less frequent. Ironically we have plenty of time at sea to write the blog. It's funny how things work out sometimes.