Marcie's Big Adventure - Day 1

---

Hi Everyone,

My trans-Atlantic cruise was planned many months ago but I unexpectedly found myself having to make the trip solo. It is 14 days from Ft Lauderdale to cross the ocean to Rotterdam, The Netherlands. There are stops, in order: Bermuda, Ireland, Guernsey, England and France. From Rotterdam, I will take a train to Amsterdam and stay there for 3 nights. I fly home from Amsterdam, Wednesday, April 24th. I'm very excited! Picked up a shiny brand new Malibu on Saturday afternoon from Avis in Leesburg. Left at 5AM this morning (Sunday) and drove to Ft. Lauderdale. It was a great car to drive, peppy and responsive. I haven't driven a new car in over 100,000 miles. :-) Avis immediately got me to Holland America's Nieuw Statendam ship. Had a very pleasant wait in the embarkation area and was on board by 11. Cabins weren't ready yet so I went up to the Marketplace buffet for a little lunch then sat out by one of the pools to read and watch people for a bit. I will try to post a picture of me waiting for my cabin to be ready. They announced cabins were ready at 12:45. Very fast! The cabin I have is a connecting cabin and I could not get my part of the door closed enough to lock it. Got myself unpacked and went off to take care of some administrivia stuff. By the time I got back to the cabin, the neighbors were in their cabin so I knocked on their door and asked them to please lock their connecting door as I could not lock mine. Nick did and then was kind enough to come over and strong arm my door into closing/locking. There was a "Meet and Greet" for solo travelers at 6PM at one of the bars so I went. There were about a dozen of us there. Everyone was very nice and very experienced with cruising. I sat and listened to the stories. Then I went off to dinner and had a perfectly cooked steak. Back to the cabin and sat on my balcony relaxing for a while. Too tired to stay up for any entertainment, I crawled into bed early. Great day! Hugs



PS I have tried many times, unsuccessfully, to add a photo here so I'm going to go ahead and publish this. I plan to do more entries throughout my adventure but I can be extremely lazy when I feel like it!

---