It is another beautiful morning, sunny but cool, and stunning as we enjoy our early morning coffee from our balcony overlooking the cemetery. 

After a while, we hit the streets and walk all around the perimeter of the cemetery- twice!  Figured we could at least get some exercise and enjoy the fresh air – and marvel at the dog walkers! They are everywhere, but these two (who we couldn’t get the phone out to photograph fast enough) had like 20 dogs between them!  Obviously a super good business to have here in B.A.

Walk completed, we headed to Costanzo Cocina Café for breakfast with the voucher that is included in our hotel stay. Pretty smart actually. The hotel has a breakfast/food prep area, but they can probably buy a whole breakfast here at the café cheaper than they can make it – and with less hassle and waste – why not?  It was a great breakfast too with choice of toast and jams or eggs and croissants with coffee.  We got both and shared. 

Next, we walked to the store to buy some mouthwash for Ed – and all the prices had changed. Overnight!!!  When we checked out yesterday we saw the clerk with a bunch of prices that he was cutting from a big sheet, and well, they are all up now. And funnily enough, the mouthwash went down in price.  Some promotion. Nothing else did though. Glad we got our supplies yesterday!

Back at the hotel, we did our final packing, showered and dressed, checked out and waited for our Uber. We know we are really early, but we A) want to give ourselves buffer in case we are going to the wrong location (it appears that you disembark from one terminal and embark from another temporary terminal, but Azamara, being Azamara and their crappy communications has not told us a thing!) and B) the Cruise Critic people who have been posting about all this said that check in took forever when they arrived – over 2 hours or something, and we’d like to avoid that.  So into the Uber we go at 10am and we luck out with the best driver. He is so nice, talked his head off, used to speak English all the time when he was young, then stopped for 40 years, now he is trying to relearn. Well, let me tell you. He speaks better than we do!  And he was so great, his family is from Portugal so we had this whole discussion about where he was from and his visits there. And, bonus!  He knows exactly where we are going, takes us the to temporary embarkation location and it is correct!  Yay.

So there we are – at the terminal way early and literally the first people there.  Totally empty. But that’s ok – we’d rather sit here and read or do whatever than get caught up in some scrum and get delayed forever.  Oh – and there is a Costa ship embarking too – so yeah – early is better for certain!

The wait isn’t actually that long – maybe 30 minutes before they call the first shuttle and we are off for the long ride to the ship and the “other” terminal.  All in all, it all works out perfectly, 1 hour from first shuttle bus to safety briefing!  Can’t ask for more!

After the safety briefing, we head up to Windows for the buffet and have the best reunion with Mark in the Sunset Bar. It is so good to finally see him again after all this time – and then, bonus, Gayle his wife comes up to meet us as well! We are so excited to see them together.  This is going to be great!!

The rest of the day goes as norm – we actually find our bags in the hallway, save the room stewards from dragging them by taking them ourselves, and since we already had our workout clothes in the carryon bag, just change quickly and head to the gym to avoid the raffle madness that happens later.  Then we unpacked, got settled and begin our wanderings, seeing so many people we know from Quest before – Preeti and Annabelle our absolute favorite security officers, Michelle the specialty restaurant hostess, Aivee our sweet Discovery restaurant hostess from before as well!    Love seeing everyone.

At dinner, we ask for our table 2 or 4, and get table #2. Table 4 is taken by b2b folks who have been on since January. Yep. January.  Hey, table 2 is fine for us and we settle in for our first dinner on our home away from home!