Europe Day 5: Monday, May 14 (Cruise)

9:00 am What my alarm was set to. . .

Our cabin on the cruise was still so dark, I fell back asleep. An hour and a half later, I finall woke up😅. Today was our free cruise day! After eating brunch outside the Garden Cafe buffet, we found the Radfords at the "Irish Pub," as I liked to call it, and we ended up ordering dessert, LOL. I reserved a spot at the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant for tomorrow night; I'm so excited, you don't even know, haha. Currently, I'm seated at the Haven sun deck, headed towards Naples, Italy, our first port! We sailed past Corsica and Sardinia, as the Bible passage I was reading came alive—Psalm 29:3 "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters."

For much of the whole day, we just ended up on Deck 18 where we tanned/sunbathed. We went back to our room to take a "break" but Hannah was asleep, so Lauren and I just went back to the deck to work on our journals, which is our assignment for our study abroad class. She's being so artsy!!! My original notebook got wet so I'm restarting (I've restarted twice because I found a better journal at home). Yani showed up, and I listened to my e-book about a girl who had a heart transplant and was now trying to travel the world to complete a bucket list. Besides eating on the cruise ship, relaxing has been my favorite

so far.

5:05 pm We went to our rooms to get all glammed up for our "fancy" crew dinner at the Manhattan Dining Room at 6:00. Shamelessly, I took advantage of our complimentary dinner and ordered both the lasagna (meh) and salmon (yum). For dessert, I devoured their lava cake and split a raspberry truffle cake with Kerrie, haha! Afterwards, we took photos on the freezing sun deck just as the sun was setting, because "pics or it didn't happen😏."

We went back to our rooms to try to find the Deal or No Deal game show, but some of the girls wanted to go to some dance show. I arrived later with Kerrie, Macey, and Yani, and after scanning our cards at the door, we realized we should've asked if it was free. When we did, the guard said it was $10, all-serious like. Macey and I looked at each other with our eyes wide open. . . and then he cracked up and said he was joking😤😂. We couldn't find the girls who left earlier, but I'm glad we didn't because our seats were in the balcony—near the exit. We didn't get too far in the show when we realized we had to step out😬.

I've never been on a cruise before and today was just so fun! Excited for Naples tomorrow☺️

TTYL

Made with Joy,

Abby Joy