It's the ten cruise commandments

There are 10 things you need to know

Number 1: Organize your covid test. Make sure you have a time and place. Stand in line, swab your nose, avoid the coughers, wait for results

Number 2: Fill out your health declaration form. Confirm you are not sick. Swear to it. Promise.

Number 3: Find the cruise terminal. Coax your Uber driver into going the literal extra mile to find it amidst a bike race that has 30,000 participants

Number 4: Have your e-ticket but also apparently know you should have an additional boarding pass. Join a line to get a printed boarding pass to add to your e-ticket

Number 5: Wait in a long line. Prove you've had a Covid test. Answer questions about your health. Prove you have an e-ticket and a boarding pass. 

Number 6: Have your boarding pass scanned. 

Number 7: Join the health screening line. Wait and wait. Answer the same health questions answered previously. 

Number 8: Join the boarding line. Wait and wait. Start to sweat with the hundreds of bodies crammed into the terminal. Find a chair for your woozy mom.

Number 9: Get boarding pass scanned again at another counter. Get told that there's something wrong with your e-ticket or boarding pass or health screening or Covid test results. 

Number 10: Two hours after beginning, panic, start to weep, beg for a wheelchair for your mom, have your picture taken, get hustled out of sight of the hundreds of other passangers. Get wheeled on to the ship. Now, you're cruising.

So, it was a day. The QM2 is a beautiful ship, but holy hell, getting to is was ten times worse than any TSA troubles I've ever had. Apparently, things did not go according to plan for Cunard. There was a bike race. There was a staff shortage (40 staffers from Boston were bussed to NY to help onboard the ship), and there were very new, very confusing Covid protocols that no one really understood. And then there were countless elderly cruise passengers caning their way through hours of different lines to complete the ten cruise commandments. The mess was so bad that the ship captain broadcasted an apology throughout the boat. I decided to accept it.

Now, the fun. It's Mom's birthday! We started our voyage with some canapes in our "state room" lol. It's a nice room and we do have a balcony, which is delightful, but a state room implies something grander than our QM2 set up. After recovering from the onboarding and eating canapes, we found the ship's library. And what a gem. So many books and so many lovely places to read were nestled in the forward part of the ship (the aft, the stern, the port? dunno). These spots allow you to read whilst viewing the Atlantic right in front of you, king of the world style. The library is our new favorite place.

At dinner, we are seated with a group of four other travelers. They were all quite interesting to talk with and one couple was from Minneapolis! They actually live in London now, and are building a retirement home in Santa Fe, so we had many a location in common. The other couple are from Boston and had been on the QM2 several times so we learned how to be cruisers from them. And we'll see the same folks at dinner each night this week. Pretty fun. And at dessert time, a lovely (and delicious) cake was presented to Mom, with a slew of waiters singing. Happy birthday, Mama. Now we are snuggled in our state room, heading east into unknown waters. Until tomorrow, signing off