• Day 4: All Aboard!

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    CathyYay! It’s time to board the ship—Crystal Symphony, here we come!

    Lissa We had a lot of luggage to pack, get into cabs and get to the boat. We went in four cabs—one for each family, plus an extra for the luggage.

    CathyThink about it—we had to pack Style Kits, information packets and other materials for our business meetings, and clothes for the ship’s formal nights and cocktail nights and excursions. And our girls love to get dressed up!

    We arrived at the ship, everyone was so excited. Our whole family had been on Crystal before, but it was Kara and her family’s first experience, so we’d been telling them how fabulous it is.

    Lissa Everybody takes that canned photo with the ship’s photographer in front of the welcome aboard sign. We posed for our own group shot—

    CathyOooh, I forgot to buy that!

    Lissa You’re kidding!

    CathyOK, anyway, the ship has a capacity of 940 guests and a crew of 545. A lot of the ship was remodeled in the fall of 2006. I was excited to see our stateroom.

    I loved the new color schemes. Our room had shades of aqua, pearl and gray. It had really beautiful Murano glass bedside lamps and 20-inch LCD flat-screen TVs and a very art deco mirror behind the bed. In the bathroom there were granite countertops and gorgeous glass vessel sinks. Pretty nice place to call home for the next week or so.

    Lissa And two places I was looking forward to: having a cappuccino in The Bistro and eating at Nobu’s. I was extremely excited about both of those.

    CathyIt didn’t take long for Lissa and I to get back into our habit of meeting in The Bistro for a cappuccino. The difference this time, though, is instead of just relaxing—

    Lissa We were talking about business, and our blogging plans, and what we were going to photograph on the ship—

    CathyAnd the meetings and interviews we needed to set up for a potential future RSVPstyle workshop on board the Crystal. And we were wrestling with…

    Lissa Balancing time with our families—

    CathyYeah, with our commitment to keeping in contact with our company and our members on our website. So far it’s been an absolute whirlwind of a trip, but every time Lissa and I got together, it was about when were we going to blog again.

    But unfortunately there was no time just yet because we had to unpack, get our families settled and get ready for our first dinner on the ship.

    Although we boarded the ship, we were not setting sail til the next day. So it was a pretty casual dinner that night. A lot of the other passengers were getting to know their tablemates. We didn’t have to worry about that, we had our built-in party! In fact the maitre d’ was nice enough because the largest table they had fit 10. Well, we had 11, so I begged them, we have three very little people—we can squeeze them in!

    Lissa Every night is a brand new menu. The thing is, the menu is three pages, you can eat whatever you want—you can eat extra salad, two entrees, you want extra bok choy? It’s whatever you want! Our first night of the Crystal feast experience. Crystal offers everything, and you can have everything!

    CathyWe chose the earlier seating because number one we have kids, and number two there’s so much to do on the ship and we wanted to experience everything, from the shows to the casino to the classes, before we all got too pooped!