Cruisin'

Cruising is definitely the way to vacation!! Dave and I had a fantastic time on our cruise, and did a phenomenal job of relaxing (if I may say so myself). It's honestly been a little hard to try to come up with what to eat since we got home, because all of the food is so easily within reach on the cruise!!

I tried to journal as we went so that I wouldn't forget anything, so I think I'll just copy that into this blog a couple of days at a time. Enjoy!

Saturday, February 16, 2008
We woke up at 3:15 this morning, and I remember glaring at Dave thinking that he was just waking up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and turning all of the lights on. Not so, he was waking up so we could get ready to go to the airport!

We parked at Michelle and Brent’s house and a taxi took us to the airport for $20. Ugh. It was only 6 miles away… Anyway, so we get to the airport with no jackets (HELLO – we are going to the Caribbean!!), and the Hobbit travel rep tells us its 45 minutes to wait inside to get our boarding passes, and only 15 minutes outside. We decided to buck up and wait outside in the freezing cold (without jackets, mind you!). It ended up only taking 10 minutes, although an old man behind us kept muttering, “Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous”. I wanted to turn around and say, “Then wait inside, crabby pants!” But I was in vacation mode so I just giggled and waited.

We got to our gate and waited to board our plane. An older couple came and sat next to me while Dave was off “reading a newspaper”. The wife brought the husband a cup of coffee, and here was how their conversation went (in VERY Minnesotan accents).

Old Woman: Oh, I wonder where the people waiting for this plane are going? Maybe they are all going on a cruise?
Old Man: DAMMIT this coffee is hot.
(They are both quiet, then after another 2 minutes)
Old Woman: Wouldn’t it be nice to go on a cruise? It says this flight is going to Miami. I bet these people are going on a cr--
Old Man: (interrupting Old Woman) DAMMIT this coffee is hot. Who would make coffee this hot?
(They are both quiet, then after another 2 minutes)
Old Woman: Well, I am glad that we got here early for our flight (theirs left AFTER ours, and we got there early for our flight. They must have gotten there like 3 hours early). I wish we were going on a cruise. That sounds like a good ti-
Old Man: (interrupting again) DAMMIT, who would make coffee this hot?
Old Woman: Well here, let me pour some of my cold water into your coffee. Does that make it better?
Old Man: Ahhhhh, that is much better.

I got a kick out of listening to these two while I was waiting for Dave to finish up his paperwork.

So we finally got down to Miami after a very bumpy flight down. We went down to gather our luggage, and waited for a bus to take us to the ship. The bus driver was something else, let me tell you. I’ve never heard such a racist person over a loud speaker. By the end of the bus ride, none of the Minnesota peeps were laughing at his jokes. We finally got to the boat and waited in a LOT of lines to finally get on the boat (after being told that we were ticketed onto the ship as Mr and Mrs TBA Hobbit – we had to get that changed as soon as we got on board, and found that it was because we booked such a last minute trip).

We were exhausted by the time we got on the boat, but we found the buffet and ate some lunch. We found our way around the boat, and went to the (LONG) boat drill. We watched and waved as the ship set sail and we were finally on our way! We ate supper with our tablemates for the week and had a great time meeting them. It turns out we were all from Minnesota, and all got booked as TBA Hobbit. We also got to meet our housekeeper that night who was from the Philippines!

We were so very tired and argue-y that day that I tried to take a nap after supper, but there was no rest for the weary. I could not fall asleep. We went to a show that night that the cruise director was in charge of, and it was hilarious. We fell asleep pretty easily after that show around midnight.

Sunday, February 17
We felt much more refreshed. We ended up ordering the room service breakfast (yay for free food!!), and ate breakfast in our room after a walk around the walking track (which was extremely crowded – ugh). After breakfast, we laid out on the deck chairs for a good long time and ate lunch in the dining rooms. We ate with a young couple from the Czech Republic, and another couple from West Virginia. We had so much fun talking with the couple from Czech Republic and having them practice their English on us. We got a few words mixed up, but all in all we had a great time talking with them! Dave was amazed that the wife looked almost EXACTLY like his sister, Michelle. We told her about that and what our last name was, and got some good background on what our last name means in Czech – fisherman – and how common it was.

I took a good long nap after lunch, and then we got up to hear all about the excursions for Cozumel that were available. After that presentation, it was already time to get ready for our first elegant supper. We had a great time at our elegant supper, and then got a couple of free drinks at the “meet the captain” party downstairs. We tried to stay up for the comedian at midnight, but ended up falling asleep after watching Transformers under the stars!!!

Here are some pics from those first 2 days of the vacation. I will post more about the vacation in upcoming days.

A self portrait as we sailed away from Miami

The ticketing tent for Carnival as we sailed away
The people from Carnival Imagination waving to us as we depart (if you look close you can see the people waving from the balcony)Mini-golfing on the very top part of the ship (windy but lots of fun!)Eating at our first elegant supper (one of our servers is in the background)

The crazy towel monkey that we found when we got back from our elegant supper. We got a new towel animal every night. Very cute!!