All Aboard!

On Saturday, 2 August, my parents, sister, and I left Canterbury early in the morning for Gatwick airport in London, where we would catch a bus service to Harwich provided by the Celebrity cruise line. I drove our rented Range Rover for most of the 1.5-hour drive to Gatwick - on the left side of the road of course. I'm pretty sure my mother and sister (and probably father too, although he hides it more effectively) were pretty terrified. Somehow, though, I managed to get us there all in one piece. Sweet.

After a two-hour wait at the airport and a two-hour bus ride to Harwich, we checked in and boarded the cruise ship. It's a Celebrity Constellation cruise, and we are essentially city-hopping from Harwich all the way to St. Petersburg and back. In the span of two weeks, we will visit Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Germany, and Russia.

So far, we have had a ton of fun. Being that this is my first cruise, I am thoroughly amazed at the amount of STUFF you can fit on one boat - beautiful restaurants, classy bars, a huge theatre, a "Fun Factory" for little kids, shops, a casino, a nightclub... the list goes on. The 20's-ish crowd on the ship is a really fun bunch of people, and I'm really enjoying getting to know lots of new people.

^The required "abandon ship" drill before we left Harwich, which as you can see my family took very seriously.

^Sunset at sea... glorious :)