January 4th New York

Waking up with another wicked hangover. Thinking why do I do this to
myself, but I remembered all the fun we had last night and don't
really care as much. It was an epic night last night! We slept in way
too late and didn't do anything we wanted to do before we got on our
cruise ship. Alex brought us falafel to eat on the way to the boat,
not as good as I thought it was going to be but good hangover food. I
was sad to say by to Alex, we were so lucky to have met him and he
made our NY experience probably the best it could have been! Matt and
I decided we need to come back and stay for like a week, there is
still so much we want to see and experience here. We do still have a
day and a half back here after our cruise. Maybe we can squeeze some
in then. Bye Alex! Now onto the boat! The cruise ship is crazy
colorful and huge! The Norwegian Gem! I don't even know what to expect
so I just follow Matt, the cruise master. We check in, go through
security and all that and step foot on the boat. The second we get on
we are offered a glass of champagne. I almost puke in my mouth and ask
for an orange juice instead. I can tell this is going to be a crazy
trip already. This is my first cruise, I have always looked down on
cruises thinking they are for old fogies, lazy people, and cheapskates
but I am still excited. There are people everywhere, already getting
tossed at the bars, running around all crazy like. Matt said there are
actually a lot of younger people then on most boats, but still a lot
of old wrinkled people too. The boat is brand new and is nicer then I
expected. We make our way to our stateroom, I walk into a room that
actually hurts my head it is so colorful! It is much larger then I
expected, I imagined sleeping in a closet with a cot..but the room is
very nice and it even has a balcony which I'm very excited to take
advantage of. We start unpacking and organizing everything. We still
both feel like hell so we just kick back and relax...when some overly
loud announcer comes on and we have to do a safety drill, life vests
and all. I really want to ditch it but the man on the intercom said
mandatory about ten times. We sit through a safety talk for about 20
minutes with our bright orange life vests on. Time to explore this
thing. We walk around aimlessly. We got a tour of the spa and gym
which I can't wait to use. We walk by all the restaurants, stores,
casino, and go to the pool area which is still freezing NY weather and
people are already in the pools and hot tubs? Most of the people on
the boat are foreign and have accents which is strange. All of the
crew members I have met are foreign as well, I asked Matt why and he
said the cruise companies go to poor countries and hire these people
and train them for cheap, I notice all the employees are like robots,
they say the same things, do things the same ways, but they are all
very nice so far. We eat at a restaurant called Tequila, not the word
I want to hear right now but I'm in the mood for mexican. The food
here is worse then I thought it would be. My tex mex rolls are most
likely frozen ones. It reminds me of school cafeteria food. If I
choose my food wisely I think I can survive this cruise. We go back to
our room and I find a bow cam on our TV, which I love! I can see
myself watching it forever looking for a whale or porpoise of some
sort. There is also a map that shows exactly where the ship is, it
shows the temp. outside, the wave height, and all those other nautical
terms. We decide to take a napper, the bed is actually comfortable! We
wake up at 2 am, but we had planned to wake up around 10pm..our sleep
schedules are way out of whack with the 4 hour time difference in NY
and our late night partying. We decide to go get a snack at the 24 hr
restaurant Blue Lagoon, the food here was actually very good, in a
fattening kind of way, comfort food. Back to bed for us. What to do
tomorrow?