While I was on the Celebrity Reflection, Event Coordinator Zsofia Bak invited me to meet with her and Hotel Director Niyazi Korkmaz to talk about leadership, life on a cruise ship, and Celebrity Cruise line in general. We met in Cellar Masters at 6pm on the last night of the cruise. The following is a summary of the conversation and not a transcript. It should be taken as an indication of the topics discussed in the interview.

I woke up at about 5am and decided rather than staying in bed, I’d give myself a final tour of the ship. I watched from the balcony as we slowly approached Dodge Island and Port of Miami. I finished up my packing and set out to walk around the ship.

As I walked past the shops on Deck 5, I saw a uniformed security officer who I assume was on her way to prepare the gangway for departure. I shrugged my shoulders and said “I just don’t want it to end.” 

This was the cruise’s second sea day.  I spent a good portion of the day doing things that will become the subjects of a few individual posts to come in the next couple of weeks. These post will include the art collection on the ship, the ship’s venues, a conversation I had with the ship’s Hotel Director, Niyazi Korkmaz and Event Coordinator, Zsofia Bak, and a recap of the specialty dining restaurant Qsine, which I ate at on the last night of the cruise compliments of Celebrity and the Hotel Director. 

Today was our day on Royal Caribbean’s private resort of Labadee, Haiti. As Celebrity is one of the brands in the greater Royal Caribbean corporation, Celebrity schedules ships to visit Labadee. The pier supports two ships, so sometimes, one ship is from Royal Caribbean and the other is from Celebrity (or both could be Royal Caribbean). For our visit, we were the only ship docked at the resort.

When I sat down to write this entry, I had a hard time getting started but I couldn’t figure out why. It’s because we had pastries at Cafe al Bacio. I had an Earl Grey tea with a blueberry streusel danish, carrot muffin, and Nutella croissant. This isn’t anything like what I would normally eat for breakfast, but it was an enjoyable change.

I started Day 3 with a trip to the Oceanview Cafe for some melon and sausage. The friends I’m on the trip with tried the Opus Dining Room for breakfast. They reported that the menu was about the same as what’s available in the buffet, but brought to you. They said they will probably stick to the buffet for breakfast from here out.

Our first full cruise day was a Sea Day on our way to Cozumel. I should clarify that the itinerary I posted earlier was backwards, so the order for this cruise is: Sea Day, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Falmouth, Labadee, Sea Day.

I started the day with breakfast in the Oceanview Cafe. I was just before they opened the full buffet. Still plenty of options, but more to come. The last cruise ship I was on was Royal Caribbean’s Empress of the Seas, the smallest ship in the fleet, so when I see the amount of food put out for the much larger number of guests, it’s pretty impressive. I had a typical cruise breakfast for me of melon and a couple of sausage links. I also had some roasted potatoes and a brioche bun. I don't usually eat bread in the morning, but this roll looked interesting.

My 7-night cruise began today as my friends picked me up to drive to Port of Miami. The drive went easy enough and upon arriving around 12:30pm, my group dropped our bags off with the porter and we went to check in. The Port of Miami had five lines for comparing IDs to cruise documents and five lines for baggage screening, so everything moved very quickly there. My friends and I were able to upgrade to a Concierge Class, which provides a priority check-in line. We were taken to the next available agent and checked-in for our cruise. Another benefit of Concierge Class is the fancy gold keycard we get for our rooms.

Hey there CruiseHabit.com readers,

Ric Ross here, long time reader, first time author. Inspired by Matt and Michael’s live blogs, and in spite of Billy’s, I’ll be live-blogging my upcoming cruise December 3rd through 10th on the Celebrity Reflection. This cruise will leave from Miami and stop at Labadee, Haiti; Falmouth, Jamaica; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; and Cozumel, Mexico. I’ve sailed Celebrity once before on the Constellation. This will be my sixth cruise overall; two of those have been with Billy and his lovely wife, Larissa.