Onboard The Star Princess

As I mentioned in a previous post, this was the second cruise Lloyd and I went on. The first was for our five year anniversary in 1999. This one was to celebrate our 15 year anniversary. We would have gone on one for our 10th anniversary, but I was pregnant with Cameron. And yes, we are planning to go on one for our 20 year anniversary - maybe we'll take the kids on that one. Well, needless to say, Lloyd and I just love cruises. We love that everything is included with the price of the cruise - FOOD, entertainment, travel, swimming pools, dancing, etc. Yes, we really like the food part since we love to eat. I'll just mention it now, I ate a lot on this cruise/vacation. I loved every bit of it and I think I even shocked Lloyd with how much I could eat. I wasn't happy when I got home and realized I had gained around 7 pounds, but I have no regrets. I would do it all over again! Originally, we were planning to go on a five-day cruise to Mexico, but when we found this cruise we changed our minds. We went to Mexico on our first cruise and were excited about doing something different. Also, this cruise was right when the swine flu was coming out so we were glad to avoid Mexico. This cruise was perfect because it left from San Francisco so we didn't have to travel a long way to get onboard. We even parked at Lloyd's work! We were also excited about cruising with Princess Cruises, we went on Royal Caribbean for our first cruise and wanted to compare . We were so blessed that my mom and Jay were able to watch the kids while we went on the cruise. They did a fantastic job and the kids loved being with Grandma and Grandpa.
We left on Thursday afternoon, May 7. After we got onboard, we went to our room to check it out. We were really excited to have a balcony outside of our room. Here we are standing on the balcony with the San Francisco bay in the background.
Here's what our room looked like. It wasn't huge, but we had plenty of room. They played reruns of The Love Boat on the TV. It was fun to watch and reminded me of when I watched that show when I was a little girl.
We checked out the rest of the ship. It has four swimming pools. Here's one with a movie screen above it. They show movies under the stars at night! Our only regret was not swimming before the ship took off. Once we were out to sea, it was way too cold and windy to swim in this pool. We did swim in the indoor one for a little while on Friday.

Lloyd checked out the basketball court and a huge chess game.
This was the area was called The Piazza. It was beautiful and had two glass elevators.

This was our first stop. Of course it had to do with food! We both ordered huge sundaes from Scoops Ice Cream.

We enjoyed our sundaes as we sailed beneath The Golden Gate Bridge. There was

lots of music, dancing, and fun as the ship pulled out to sea. It was such a festive atmosphere! We went back to our room and took a nap before dinner. Here we are in the dining room. The dinner was good. I had pasta and Lloyd had a seafood dish.
I was mostly excited about the four desserts we ordered. I love desserts! Can you tell?

After dinner we enjoyed a show called "Words and Music." The cruise singers and dancers performed numbers from different Broadway composers. I love musicals so I really enjoyed the show. Our first day on the ship was fabulous! We went to bed, dreaming about what we would do the next day.