Anchors Aweigh!

Here's our home for the next ten days or so -- the Celebrity Constellation, at the port of Ravenna where we boarded her yesterday. We took an early bus from Lake Garda with the others who bought our tour package, mostly British, and now we're all just tiny lettuce leaves mixed into the huge tossed salad of nationalities on the ship. Many of the passengers seem to be Americans, at least based on accents. No MAGA hats so far.

We have a balcony room on deck nine, which is pretty high up. We're just beneath the front of the big black funnel on the top of the ship, with the big X on the side. (Apparently that's the symbol of Celebrity Cruises, and one wonders how Elon Musk feels about that.) The deck that looks like a black line is the solid wall of windows in the Ocean View Cafe, the ship's biggest buffet restaurant, which is where I am now. Our "stateroom" is one floor below that. ("'Stateroom' sounds so 'Love Boat,'" Dave said yesterday.)

We were all settled in our quarters by early afternoon, looking over a beach adjacent to the port. There were windsurfers and people parasailing, and this...

...which I believe is technically known as a "big fishing thing."

This is the shipboard martini bar, where I am going to do my best to not spend all my free time, but we did settle in there yesterday for a drink before dinner. Those two women on the barstools talked about how many times before they'd been to Italy, and on how many other cruises. They reminded me of my stepmother, who was always on one cruise or another. It's a way of life for some people, though I can't imagine doing it regularly.

We went for dinner at the Tuscan Grill, a specialty restaurant which I suppose was somewhat Tuscan, and while we were there the ship finally got underway. One minute I looked out the window and saw the concrete pier where we were docked, and the next, the pier was gone and we were moving. It was all very subtle. The ship is so big I couldn't even feel the change.

We had an after-dinner dink in the Sunset Bar at the back of the ship ("aft," as the old salts would say).

And this morning we're off the coast of Croatia, where we begin our adventures.

Unfortunately Dave's Crohn's disease has been acting up, which is why he's been hanging back on some of the trip activities so far. He said he may not go ashore today, but has urged me to go on my own (we have a purchased excursion planned). So we'll see what happens with that.

Two minor criticisms so far: The coffee in the Ocean View Cafe is terrible. It tastes like burned rubber. I might switch to tea for this trip! And I could do without the overloud piped-in modern pop music by whiny, shouty singers.

But the view is pretty darn spectacular.