May 28, 2025: MCS Mediterranean Cruise Embarkation Day

(Written May 28)

I got up a little after 7 and got the hair dryers doing their work on the clothes. I had hoped that the socks were mostly dry by then, but they weren’t. I put on a podcast, and eventually Mom got up. She showered first and then came to ask where she should get started. I sent her off to find food since my stomach was growling. Brian eventually dragged himself out of bed as well and got to work. 

Eventually, just after 9, we had to call it. Everything that was still wet went into our plastic compression bags that we were using for laundry, and we packed everything up. We were supposed to be at the cruise terminal by 10, but we didn’t even make it out of the door until then. 

Getting an Uber was tricky, according to Lara. (The rest of the crew stayed at a different place last night since by the time Lara and Greg joined the cruise, we’d already booked a place and we couldn’t find one to fit all 10 of us. Kirt and Julie opted to leave our overcrowded place to stay in the same place as Lara and Greg). We waited for a few minutes, and, upon hearing about the other group’s troubles from Lara, I said we should just take the bus. 

We walked over to the bus stop and Brian felt a buzz from his phone. He checked the notification and found out that the Uber he ordered never got canceled (despite him hitting the Cancel button multiple times), so we rushed back to where we could be picked up (Brian shifted the pick up spot as much as he could). We arrived just in time, and the driver offered us candy before taking us to the port. All was going well until…the driver kept missing turns to the port.

We knew that it would require some backtracking to get us into the port, and that there was a 180 degree turn in the route at some point. Brian was following our route on Uber as we went along, and I was watching on google. Michael was also thinking we’d missed where we’re going, and then the driver said, “Aeroporta, right?” “No! Cruise Port! With a ship (followed by me pantomiming waves of the ocean.” 

He got us turned back around and headed back to the port, but he seemed to keep missing the turns that google had shown us. Meanwhile, the entire drive he was talking to someone on the phone. He had the Uber directions pulled out on his phone, but he was completely ignoring them! We had already missed our check-in window, and we were getting nervous about getting onboard in time, especially since he didn't seem to know where we were supposed to go.  

Finally, Brian interrupted his phone call to check to make sure he was taking us the right place, pointing him to his phone with directions. He put his glasses on, looked at the phone, and said, “Ah, Si!”  And turned into the dock area using a special barcode. He had passed that exact spot 20-30 minutes previously, and we were dumbfounded that the drive that should have only been 20 minutes actually could have only been 10 minutes and instead ended up 40 minutes! And then Uber charged us double! (Don’t worry though, Brian got that part refunded). 

We finally got to the ship, dropped off our baggage (nobody else was there dropping bags), and then made our way through the various check points and security checks. I had to be pat down again before getting on our cruise. We were able to drop off our backpacks in the room right away (and learned that our room was finished!), and then we went and got lunch with Kirt and Julie. 

We had our muster drill at 1:15 p.m. and then I headed back to the room to take a nap. 

When I got to the room, I found our bags waiting for us, so I opened them up to get my motion sick medicine and remembered about the laundry. I strung a clothesline through the room and got to hanging the wet things back up. Brian arrived when I was almost finished and helped my mom do the same thing in her room next door. 

We got everything we needed out of the suitcases, and then got everything off the bed so we could lay down for a bit since we were SOOOOO tired. I ended up staying in bed until dinner. Meanwhile…

[Brian taking over the narrative]The kids and I went to go find the kids clubs and explore the ship some more. After getting Gabe checked in, we realized that Rachel and Michael’s club wasn’t open until later, so instead Michael decided to go exploring and Rachel and Gabe went swimming. I left them to go get their goggles, and found Devri in the midst of “suitcasepocalpyse of 2025” and helped her get the bed cleaned off of all of the contents of the suitcases. After doing so, we both laid down to just have some downtime. Meanwhile, Gabe and Rachel decided to come find out why I was taking so long and grabbed their goggles, then ran off to swim again.

At that point, I realized there was no rest to be had and went to go try to find the kids. On the way, however, Lara texted that our excursion in Istanbul was cancelled for everyone and we had to rebook, so I headed off the excursions desk with my dad to figure out what was going on. Lara had just been there and had been told quite forcefully that the entire excursion was cancelled for everyone. After a couple of false starts with agents working at the desk, they finally got someone who knew what they were doing and were actually helpful who told them that the excursion was not actually cancelled at all and we were totally fine. Lara joined them at the desk to cancel the backup excursion she had booked, and we all wondered if the first guy that helped her out was on the same stuff that our Uber driver was on.

Michael during that time had gone back to the room and woken Devri up to get someone to check him into his club, and she told him where to find me. He waited patiently as we finished up at the excursions desk, and finally we set out to get him checked in. Greg met up with them all so Michael was pretty (not) thrilled to have his aunt, uncle, Papa, and dad try to check him into his club. Funny enough, they told us that Michael could have checked himself in at any time and didn’t need anything from his parents to do so (a change from how Carnival does it). Doh! Since there were only a few 12 year olds in there, Michael told us to walk slowly out of the club so that he could catch up quickly if he wanted to.

We all went to the buffet to get pizza and then sat and talked until dinner. Meanwhile, Devri was juggling kids coming and going from the room while trying to sleep the whole time. She finally gave up and we all went to dinner together.  Rachel, Michael, Lara,  Greg, and I went to a ventriloquist show. Greg and I gave it a 2/10, Lara gave it a 3/10, Michael very generously gave it a 4/10 (he went first and wanted to bring it down once he heard our ratings), and Rachel gave it a 7/10. It was clearly geared towards little children and the rest of us were pretty bored. I fell asleep a few times. Meanwhile, Gabe, Devri and Leta went back to the rooms and fell asleep or read a book.

(August 5, 2025 Reflections by Devri)

We knew going into our MSC cruise that we shouldn't expect a lot; it was our floating hotel, after all. This particular cruise was unique in that people embarked and disembarked at several of the ports. This meant that the entire ship didn't turnover at Bari. Some got off when we got on, but the majority of the people had already been cruising for a day or more. That made embarkation really, really easy (aside from the Uber debacle in getting there), and we got our bags in our rooms really quickly. There were so many languages spoken onboard, and all the announcements were given in Italian, Spanish, English, and German, which was really cool. 

There were very few children onboard, which was really different, and most of the children were really young. Michael and Rachel didn't go to the kids' club much because there just really weren't any kids there. It was nice though because that meant they hung out with us more.

After running around since Amsterdam, it was so nice to just relax on board on our first day.