Cruise Day 1 - Embarkation

From the moment we entered the lit­tle air con­di­tioned build­ing in the port town of Civ­i­tavec­chia, it was clear we were about to expe­ri­ence a com­pletely new kind of travel. We were greeted with smiles by peo­ple in sharp uni­forms and crisp white gloves. They con­firmed the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of our last name, dis­cussed dietary requests, and every spo­ken syl­la­ble was warm and wel­com­ing. We had already dropped off our back­packs, we just had my purse and Brian’s cam­era bag on us – even then, they offered to carry them for us onto the ship. We were escorted onto the ship, and wel­comed by every pass­ing staff mem­ber. We ascended a spi­ral stair­case while a man strummed a gui­tar nearby. We were lead into the King Olaf lounge, where we were invited to eat and drink until we felt like offi­cially sign­ing in.

We were hon­estly a tad over­whelmed at this point. We were pretty sure we’d just stepped into some par­al­lel uni­verse. So we just checked in. They took pho­tos of us for our ship ID cards, and then a staff mem­ber appeared to show us to our suite.

Of course it is beau­ti­ful. A bal­cony and sit­ting room, a flower in a sil­ver vase, a bot­tle of cham­pagne chill­ing – a walk in closet (which we don’t even have at home). Moments later, a knock at the door. Maria, our stew­ardess, stood there with a tray of cham­pagne and caviar aper­i­tifs for us, and showed us around – how to work every­thing, etc.

Later, we made our way up to Sky Bar, which is an open-air bar on the top deck, and chit-chatted with some oth­ers. At some point we decided to walk around the boat to take some pic­tures, but weren’t sure if we could take our drinks with us. I turned to a woman who had been on a few of these cruises, and asked her. She laughed and said, “honey, this is your yacht. You can do what­ever you want, wher­ever you want, how­ever you want.”

We were exhausted from the heat and excite­ment of Rome ear­lier in the day, the run to the train and now tak­ing in all that is the Seabourn Leg­end but there was still a din­ner ser­vice to go. Once we were under­way we returned to our room, and changed into some fresh clothes for din­ner and pro­ceeded to the restau­rant on deck 3. The food was exquis­ite with wine par­ings through­out, first course was a wild mush­room soup and a red beet carpac­cio; sec­ond course seared scal­lops with crisp smoked bacon, truf­fle risotto with warm aspara­gus salad and of course the ser­vice was impeccable.

After din­ner we returned to our room and quickly fell asleep.