Cruise

The cruise was a lot of fun. The ship left Galveston shortly before 6pm. We were running an hour late because the ship arrived late to drop the previous people off. That was a nice mess in Galveston, people trying to get on the boat, and people trying to get off. Parking lots were still full, nice mess. However, on a positive note, the ship was late because of a medical emergency and had to turn back around to Cozymel.

We arrived in Jamaica Wednesday morning. Jeff and I had an excursion there and did what was known as Dunns River Falls. You actually physically climb the water fall. I figured you climbed around it or up climbed stairs to get to the top. (Well, they had that for people too). But it was designed to climb through the actual water falls. Pretty fun, got lots of wet! When we finished climbing it began to rain. I thought it was comical since some people that didn't climb probably didn't want to get wet. So everyone and I mean everyone, got drenched. It would start raining, then stop, then start! After the falls, we were bussed over to Dolphin's Cove. There they had dolphins and you watched trainers and other people who paid money to actually be in with the dolphins doing tricks. They also had a small jungle (more of an exhibit) of different animals. To give a better description, I would call it tropical zoo! Well, at about 2:00pm, we were still pretty drenched from the rain and were tired of being wet. So we waited for a bus and headed back toward the ship. We didn't do a lot of shopping, only bought a shot glass and two post cards.

Randy, I looked at a hat for you, but I thought it was overpriced, it had the dreads and all. They played Bob Marley on the boat ride over to Dunns River Falls and I knew all the words to the two songs they played. I know the one was Three Little Birds but I don't remember the other song. They played a variety of reggae music.

The boat left that day I'm thinking at 6pm. We were headed to Grand Cayman.

Well, we were supposed to arrive at Grand Cayman at 7am and Jeff and I had an excursion to swim with the sting rays. So Jeff and I planned on getting up at 7am so we could get ready and have breakfast before having to meet for the excursion. Unfortunately, at 7am, our director and later the captain too, came over the PA system and commented that the waters were too rough to tender and we were not going to be able to stop. You could sure tell though that morning that the waters were rough. The whole boat was shaking and after Jeff and I had showers, we went to breakfast and you would try to walk in a straight line and it was challenging! So all we saw on Thursday was ocean. As a joke for my scrapbook, when I title the Grand Cayman day, I'm going to put a picture of the ocean since that's what we did that day!

Friday, was Mexico. We weren't too impressed with it, but it's Mexico. It was still torn up from last years hurricanes and it was easily noticeable. The dock had been fixed enough to be able to get boats in, but Carnival was there the same day as us and they were tendered in. We didn't have any excursions planned for Mexico and had only planned to walk around and shop. We took a taxi to the end of the strip and shopped. From the ship to the end of the shopping strip was probably 3-4 miles. We ended up walking the entire strip for the heck of it. We could have gotten a taxi back to the ship, but decided what the heck! HOWEVER, we were thirsty by the time we got back to the ship! But I was able to get a few decent pictures because of walking, and I even found a $10 peso in the rocks while taking a few pictures! Based on a few transactions we made in Mexico, it would probably be worth maybe a $1 in U.S., but it'll get added to the scrapbook. I'm sure it would have looked a lot prettier if it hadn't been hit from the hurricane so badly!

We arrived back the following Sunday morning to Galveston and I was ready to be back home. On Thursday of the trip, I was really starting to miss Jakob. But if we would have had our day at Grand Cayman, it probably wouldn't have started hitting me as much.

The cruisehing on the curise is that they do everything for you! They do the cooking, the cleaning, put on shows, bring your dinner to you. That was great. The cruise director made a joke the last night we were on the cruise about how we would have to go back to reality after we got off the ship! He joked about the towels you throw on the floor and how they magically reappeared dried and hung up and how at night our dinner was brought to us, all we had to do was order it! Our main waiter would give us recommendations for food for the following day, and Saturday night he asked us if we were driving or flying when we left. We were all driving and he said lunch time tomorrow will probably be McDonalds and if we didn't like that Burger King. Really funny.

Neither of us had any problems with sea sickness. Oh, and we did most everything on the boat. Even made Jeff go with me to play Bingo so I could say we played. We gambled $9.25 in the casino. We went to 5 out of 7 shows in the evening. I swam in the inside pool and we also read our books and relaxed. Tuesday during the cruise was mostly spent reading and relaxing and watching the water. We had rough water throughout that day too.

Well, anyhow, it was fun and it was nice to sleep in on majority of the days. Our inside room would be completely pitch black when all the lights were off so we had no problems sleeping. Oh and one other thing, every evening after dinner, when we would go back to our rooms, the attendants would make animals out of the towels for us. Later in the week, they even gave us a lesson on how to make the animals they had been doing for us! It became conversation at our dinners, asking each other what they had the previous night!