Jan 27 – momma wasn’t happy to hear I was setting the alarm for 5am, the Valiant Lady was scheduled to dock @ 6…. I wasn’t missing the opportunity to watch that sexy scarlet cruise ship back into Pier 4 of San Juan Harbour. I tracked her on a Maritime traffic website and in she came! Pretty unique opportunity, watching that from my balcony, and it was well worth the early morning. Who wants to sleep away embarkation day anyway… it’s the best day of the cruise (well most of the time, this sailing had a more special day 😊)
Confirmed that we had everything packed, asked for 12noon check out from hotel and walked down to the pier. Janet and I had stateroom 9009A – category “Sweet Aft Suite” which meant 2 things: #1 we had our favourite location on the ship, facing the aft (best sunsets, castoffs and watch the wake the whole voyage) and #2 we were “Rockstars” 🎸
The rockstar passenger class of Virgin Voyages was another word for VIP. In other words they treat us like a rockstar 😎🤘as we walked up to the pier to deposit our bags (we wanted one more burger at our little buns place) a VV crew member swiftly pulled us out of the line and took us to the front, they tagged our bags for our stateroom, put on our sexy black, exclusive to rockstars, bracelets (this is our room key, credit card, ID on board) and said we could wait in the lounge. First we went for our burger, we didn’t want to wait too long in a lounge, then went through security to start exploring the vessel 🚢
What a beauty!
Rockstars get to go on first! Feeling like Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks we walked onto the Lady Ship before everyone else. NBD 😜 I wouldn’t call the vessel “breathtaking” or “spectacular” but what I will say is that sexy is everywhere. No kids allowed and it was a refreshing feeling getting on board without that “family” feel.
Security was a breeze, us elites were invited to a lounge called “Sip” for some housekeeping and champagne. Janet and I quickly ran up to our stateroom, just to check it out (amazing) and headed back to “Sip”. This is when we met our rockstar agent! Her name was Kimberly, and to be sincere, KIMBERLY was the real rockstar of the show. Kimberly made the voyage very special, but we will get into that later. We booked the shows, ensured we had the best dining times and the best restaurants, slammed a quick bottle of bubbly with the other rockstars and got ready for the peasants🥲 to arrive on board. We had a reservation for 8 people at the Italian restaurant “Extra Virgin” that evening and a castoff show after.
Dinner was really good, pasta was perfect. Paul turned up his volume 📢 to let everybody on board know that he was ready to set sail we met our first favourite server, Joel… who took a liking to one of the ladies at our table. After dinner, we went to the red room ♥️♥️♥️ to watch the “MISS-Behave” show. I think it’s tacky to video those shows, I’ll leave it to the imagination. It was very entertaining, laugh out loud refreshing, and really put the “!” On the adults only voyage! The master of ceremonies was an eccentric person named RHCS Pieces who dawned a gold sequin ensemble with an amazingly flexible ballerina sidekick. It was a ton of fun for the first night. Played some cards 🃏 and roulette in the casino and hit the hey, next day we were in Tortola, very close to where sir Richard Branson has his private island 🏝️
We didn’t have any plans for the next day, actually, our hope was to kind of enjoy the vessel, while everybody went to explore the island. To be continued……
Seas the day 