What Happens on the Breakaway: Our First Girls' Trip Disaster (and Triumph)

I'm going to be honest with you right from the start: none of us had any idea what we were doing. When Sarah suggested a girls' trip cruise for our thirty-fifth birthdays, we all thought she meant like... a weekend getaway to a spa resort. But Sarah's the planner in our group—the one who color-codes spreadsheets and researches things like she's writing a dissertation—so when she started talking about the Norwegian Breakaway sailing out of New York to Bermuda, we just kind of nodded and went along with it. Four weeks later, we were standing in the Manhattan terminal, oversized carry-ons in hand, looking like we'd dressed ourselves in the dark, and I remember thinking: "Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?" The ship was absolutely massive. Like, I knew cruise ships were big, but nothing really prepares you for walking up the gangway and realizing you're about to board a floating city. The Breakaway felt more like a resort than a ship—there was this incredible atrium with soaring ceilings, live music echoing everywhere, and people in cocktail dresses at 4 PM on a Wednesday. We found our interior cabin on deck nine (which felt like a closet, but in the coziest way possible),…