Cruising the Western Caribbean - Day 1; 4-5-2015

My family loves to go on Cruises and it had been awhile since we had gone on one as a family.  So for Spring Break this year we decided to go ahead and go on one.  This time we choose Royal Caribbean - Navigator of the Seas.   We decided to go on this cruise mainly because of the times it was available and also it left out of Galveston, Texas.  Galveston is so much easier for us to get to since its a day drive to there, unlike the ships that leave out of  Florida.  We are leery of flying to Florida because once before our plane was delayed and we missed the ship and over half the cruise. The cruise line put us up at a resort hotel at our next port of call but it just wasn't the same as being on the ship.   Now if we can drive we much rather do that.

These are the images that were taken that first day as we left Galveston.
The ship pushes itself away from the dock by using its thrusters.  Its such an unusual feeling having the ship go sideways.  When it gets to the middle of the channel it then starts to move forward.

This looking towards the back of the ship.

 Looking at the cruise terminal you can see all sorts of birds in the water.  The thrusters stir up the waters and it obviously brings food to the birds for they to be so concentrated in this area.

 I thought it was so neat to be able to look down and see the birds flying below us.  It's not often you can watch the top of a bird as it is flying.

 The Navigator of the Seas wasn't the only cruise ship making this voyage.  Here's a Carnival cruise ship doing basically the same trip.  We had traveled with Carnival before but the kids didn't like it as much as they do Royal Caribbean.

 This is part of the pier shopping area.  I've been to it before and have enjoyed it.  The sailing ship to the right is  the 1877 Iron Barque 'ELISSA',  and I've been on it before.  2011/09/beautiful-flowers-other-things-around

Going past it and looking back at it.

This is the Ocean Star Oil rig.  I've been here before and written about it as being one of my favorite places to visit./2011/09/ocean-star-offshore-rig-museum-galeston  I wished I could have visited it again but time did not allow it.  At least I got to take pictures of it from a different angle.

Here's another view of it.

It was interesting to see this tug boat hard at work pulling this barge away from the pier.

It was a pretty overcast day and we did have rain as we were driving down so I was not able to get some good picture of Galveston. 

I did like this showing the channel marker and also the coastline of the city.

This was looking back up the channel towards Houston.

The birds around there were magnificent.  It was so much fun watching them fly all around us.  What really amazed me was the size of some of the sea gulls.  

This was not a sea gull but a brown pelican.  Galveston always seem to have a lot of pelicans hanging out by the waters edges.

Another brown pelican flying.

The rest of the day and for the next couple of days we just took it easy since we were at sea for 3 days.