S-c@-tt3red Thoughts

Caribbean Cruise Journal -==-04/23/2005-==-

Day 1 - Travel Day
Today was the first day of the cruise… or rather, our travel day. Well, I gotta say, this was probably the most eventful flight I’ve been on.
The day before our flight, we went to Annette and Bunty’s and spent the night there, because their neighbor Rob was going to take us to the airport the next day.
We were a little bit in a hurry because basil (another friend) was going to pick us up from our house so that we didn’t have to take our car and park it outside for 7 days.

The next day we were up at 7:00, all packed up and ready to go. Rob met us, and drove us to the airport. We got into the plane, and before we knew it, we were on our way to Texas, which was our first stop! Wooo hoo , we were excited, but we all slept on the plane.

We got to Texas, and we had about a 2 hour break in Texas airport, so we went and had some lunch at wendy’s, chilled out for a while until it was time to take off. Finally it was time for us to get into the plane… and we did. But not for long… about 15 minutes after boarding, and pulling out of the parking spot, the captain gets on the intercom, and tells us that he’s having some problems starting one of the engines from the cockpit, so he was asking for an engineer to come and start up the engine from the back … from the engine itself I guess.
This is the hotel we were staying at in Miami… it sucked!!

Another 20 minutes later, he comes back on the intercom with bad news, and he says that the repair wasn’t going to happen right there, and they had to take the plan out of service. So guess what, we had to get out of the plane, and get rescheduled on another aircraft, which took another 30 minutes… finally, another plane was available, so we finally boarded, and yay, we actually took off!! About an hour and a half into the flight, the flight attendant gets on the intercom, and announces: ” we have a medical emergency on board, do we have an MD available”? So a guy right in front of us goes to the front and helps the woman, and recommends that she goes to the hospital immediately, so the captain announces that they’re going to land for a medical emergency. I gotta say that was the craziest and fastest plane landing I’ve ever seen. I think we went from 30000 Ft. to landing in about 3 minutes… I can’t tell for sure, but I think the captain actually did a nose dive, it was actually pretty awesome. At this time, it was about 11:00pm, and I guess all the service personnel in Tampa Florida (the emergency airport we were landing in) was off duty, and after taking out the sick lady, we had to wait another 30 minutes or so for the fuel truck to come by to refuel us before we can take off again.
Finally, we ended up taking off… and we actually made it all the way to Fort Lauderdale… can yo believe it??!

After we arrived to FLL airport, we headed out to get our luggage, and they all got there… so at least now we’re happy that non of our luggage got lost.
We went out and checked for a cab, and it was going to cost us $60 to get to the hotel… yikes. But $30 per couple wasn’t too bad I guess… the taxi cab driver was a little eery, making some weird comments, but he did tell us that the hotel we’re going to was in the ghetto, and boy was he right… there was actually a fence around the hotel, and a guard, and he told us… YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO OUT AT NIGHT in this area… yikes.. That was good to get us all comfortable and at home… mind you the hotel was pretty sucky too, it smelled all musty and moldy … yup , I guess that’s what we get for going for the cheapest hotel option huh? By that time, it was already about 1:00am …. But that was only 10:00pm our time, so it wasn’t too bad… we checked in, and we ordered a pizza from our room as we were all hungry… after the pizza, we were all ready for bed… So Good night!

Day 2 - Getting ready to sail - April 23rd -
This morning, we woke up at the crazy hotel… we all took showers in the morning, and now we’re getting ready to leave to go to the boarding area.. … More to come …

Man was it a full day after that.
We took the shuttle from the hotel to the boarding area, and a man welcomed us, and took all our luggage and told us that he’ll deliver it to our room, so we tipped him, gave him our luggage, and went on our way. We then proceeded to the check-in area to get our sea passes and such.
On deck 6, our first picture of the cruiseThat was surprisingly a very painless process. We went to the check-in counter, they took our eDocs, and checked our passports and all that, and then gave us a sea pass…
This is the pool on Deck 11, a live band played
most of the time there this is where they asked us to take our credit card to associate it with the sea passes for on board purchases. We then proceeded to go through security, at which point they put a blue sticker on our cards, and we went to stand in line to actually board the ship. We waited in that line for about 35 minutes, and then proceeded to go through the final check through security to board the ship.

Yay!! We were finally on board. We were in awe by the grandness of everything in there. It was truly amazing. Each one in our group scrounged around to find their cabin. By the way, at checking, they have very handy little maps/activities on the ship that can fit in your pocket… take one of those.

We found our cabin, and that was our first look at our new home away from home. I really did not know what to expect from just looking at the pictures, but staying in an inside stateroom is a little bit tight. I wouldn’t recommend it for more than 2 people… when you open the main door, you pretty much have to force yourself in there.. If the closet or the bathroom doors are open, you’re pretty much stuck in the hallway
This is the main dining room, it’s huge
it spans over 3 decks!!

Our first dinner in the dining room
That’s our whole groupAs soon as you pass that area, you get a little more floor space, this is the “living area” with the couch. On the far end of the room there’s the beds… which is pretty comfortable for a ship I guess. (I’m used to sleeping on a $1000 mattress, so nothing will be as comfortable as that).

After checking out our cabins, we took the time to go ahead and check out the different places, of course, our first stop was WindJammers cuz we were hungry, AND, all they talk about in cruises is food, so we had to see what all the fuss is about. Well, it was definitely what they say it is. It was pretty sweet, as soon as we got there, the host welcomed us, and from there on, we just went in and found a table, of course there was 8 of us in the group, so it wasn’t super easy to find that table, but we eventually did. The food was most excellent, considering they’re cooking for 3000 people. I enjoyed every bit of it, the good news is that Windjammers is the one place where everything is free, with the exception of Coke, and alcoholic drinks of course. For the coke, you can either pay $7 / day and get free soda for the day, or pay $42 for the whole week, and get soda anywhere on the ship for free, either way it’s not too bad. I opted not to get one, because of the temptation of drinking too much coke, so I decided to just stick with Water and Ice Tea, and an occasional Mai Tai, a mango tango, or some other fruity drink.

We were now full, and ready to go to bed… NOT!! actually, we headed back to our cabins, and our luggage had already been delivered, so we unpacked, and waited for the muster drill. They announced it about 3 times, and at 4:30pm, everyone was to head to D24 for the drill. It was kinda interesting to see everyone with their life jackets on. It was kinda cool. It also wasn’t as long as I heard it was. The whole thing (Apart from getting to the location because of the crowds) was about 10 minutes.. It really wasn’t bad.
This is the voyager, identical to the Navigator

After the drill, we all gathered at the pool for our first hang out. There was a live band outside and everybody was so full of energy, kids were all over the pool. It was fun though, we were up on deck, and watched the ship sail, so we saw Miami disappear as we sailed away… it was a nice opportunity for some cool pictures from the deck though.

We then headed to the promenade, which seems to be the heart of most activities in the ship, it’s basically like a mall, right in the smack middle of the ship. It’s pretty sweet, everybody goes there, shops, hangs out… walk around, eat … so we stayed there for about 3 hours just chillin’ talking, watching people. It was getting close to dinner time, so we all headed to our respective staterooms to change for that. Even though that night, the dining room’s dress code was only casual, I went ahead and dressed a little more for that, but a lot of people were in there in shorts and flip flops, that was the last night this was going to be seen in the main dining room though.
We got there, and again, the Maitre’d welcomed us, and directed us to our reserved table, so we all sat, soon after that, the waiter came and introduced himself. His name was Omer from Turkey, and his assistant’s, Roxanne, whom I’m still not sure where she’s from. I’m In awe of the multi ethnic groups that are on this ship as crew as staff, it makes it so much more interesting. In addition to that, the service was excellent, they wait on you so well, you’re pretty much always bound to find of your two waiters around if you need anything. They were also very friendly, and were making jokes… of course, the waiter being single was flirting with all the wives on the table, but of course, it was all in good humor

Dinner was over, it was about 10:30pm, so we hung around for a while, until we figured out what we wanted to do. We decided to head out to the Dungeon, which is a night club somewhere towards the front of the ship, this one is 18 and up, and it was pretty cool. We danced the night away. There really isn’t too much to say about it, it’s a night club like all others
After the night club it was about 1:00am, so we were ready to head for bed, and we did, that wrapped up our first day on the ship.

Day 3 - A Day at sea
Today was our first day at sea. Our plan was to go to the gym in the morning to work out some, but pretty much non of us made it because of the late night before, that was all good, instead we decided to just go to Windjammer to get some grub. Breakfast was pretty good, although the eggs seemed to be a little watery … not sure what the deal was there, but other than that, everything was very good.

When we were done with breakfast, we had a quick “meeting” to figure out what to do next, well the unanimous decision was to go out to the pool. So we went and got our swim trunks on, and headed to the sun. here’s a tip: if you want to go to the pool, don’t go on high noon, you’re NOT going to find a seat. Anyway, we made that mistake once, hopefully not again later. We finally found a couple of seats after waiting around for about 30 minutes. The sun scorching, we ended up sitting there for about 3 hours, with sunblock of course , however, even with that, we still got burned, not too bad, but got burned, made the rest of the day slightly more uncomfortable. During our stay there, we met a couple that was sitting next to us, so we had some fun times. After the pool, we went to our staterooms and took a quick shower, then Derric and I headed out to see if we can play some ping pong. Unfortunately, all tables were taken, so we walked around for a little bit, trying to see if we can find anyone from our group…. Alas, we didn’t, so, what’s better than to go and chill at Windjammer’s (AGAIN)… of course it was just for a snack, but was still good. We got a table that was right by the window so we had a nice ocean view. Soon after that, everyone from our group stepped into the windjammer. I guess that’s a pretty popular place! We ended up hangin’ out at WindJammer for about 1 or 2 hours… can’t recall, and we then headed to our staterooms to catch a quick nap before the dinner for tonight.
An escargot plate, and shrimps
It was soo good!!

My wife dancin’ in the Dungeon
Yeah, the dinner! That was awesome, this was our first formal night, and it was amazing, everything was exceptional, from the attire, to the dining room, to the waiters to the quality of the food, it was just amazing. That night, I ordered 3 starters (Lobster Bisque, Escargot, and Shrimp Cocktail), and one entrée which was a Medium Rare roast beef with asparagus, mashed potatoes and mushrooms. For Dessert, I had soufflet, which was also complemented with a really good piece of chocolate, that was a good wrap for dinner. After dinner, we were all ready to get out of the formal clothes though, so we went to our cabins, changed, and met back down at the scooner’s bar, which is basically piano bar. We chilled out for about an hour there, at which time it was time for the Single Mingle thingy at the club, so we packed our stuff and moved to “The Dungeon”, the night club. Even though we weren’t all singles, we still had a blast, at first we didn’t all dance too much, as we were just drinking and having fun, but around the end of the evening, (at least for me), it was about 2:30am, the girls started dancing, I guess they had enough alcohol in them to shake that bootay

That was a wrap for me though, yet another full day on the ship… tomorrow we will be docking at St Thomas port, so it should be different. The plan is to wake up around 10:30am to go and grab some brunch before we leave the ship…
Ta ta… good night.

Day 4 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Scenery in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Today we woke up at around 10:30am, and headed straight to windjammer for some breakfast. We really didn’t have too much to do, as we were supposed to dock at San Juan Puerto Rico. At 2:00pm, we hear this big sound from the ship, which I think is the anchors. They had announced about the docking before, and had told us that the Customs had to check the first 2 decks of the ship before they clear us for disembarkation.
Another scenery picture in San Juan

Finally, at around 2:15pm, the ship was cleared, so we all packed up our back packs and stuff, and headed out of the ships. We need to have our Sea Pass, and any Photo ID for identification when re entering the ship. The process was actually pretty simple, in about 10 minutes we were off the ship. As soon as we stepped out of the port, we were attacked by tons of tour guides wanting to take us around town. So we looked around, and decided to take one of the tours, they charges us $20 / person to take us through the city and stop us for pictures and stuff like that. It was well worth it. we took lots of pictures, I can’t really describe too much here. But I can say that it would be insane for me to drive in these streets, it was actually mostly Old San Juan, so it was all brick still, most of the stores smell musty, although in general, you see really nice cars around… kind contradictory to the building around, although I think most of them were sort of renovated. After the tour, the guy dropped us off, and we started walking around the shops, they closed at 6:00pm, so not much stays open after that. That also surprising considering this is such a touristy area, and the shops would stay open late, but I was wrong. Oh well. We stopped at a puerto rican fast food restaurant. We had some tacos real quick, because some were getting pretty hungry. I didn’t eat anything as I was waiting to get back to our dining room and get the real dinner. These dinners are truly something to look forward to, probably the highlight of my day was that..
And yet another scenery picture
This is a pic of the dining room staff
doing something different another night,
but you get the idea

After we ate, we decided that we just wanted to head back to the ship, as it had been about 5 hours of walking, and some of us were getting tired… the checkin back to the ship was very simple as well, and didn’t take more than 5 minutes. All we had to show is our sea pass and photo id, and put our bags through an X-Ray Scan and we were on. We all headed straight to our staterooms to take showers, as the climate in San Juan was super humid, and we were all very sticky and nasty.
We then hung out a bit in the staterooms before we headed to schooners bar to meet up with the rest of the group. By that time, we were all pretty hungry and ready for the highlight of our day (in my opinion at least).
Today was particularly good, the food was exceptional. I ended up ordering 3 starters 2 entrees and a dessert.. Yup it’s crazy, but I couldn’t help it. I had a scallop starters which was probably the best scallop I’ve ever had, I had an extra order of that, but our waiter was after my own heart, and got me 2 extra instead :), then I had a great salad, it really wasn’t anything too special, I don’t remember what it was called, but it had this tangy special taste to it, t’was good! Then, I had a strawberry Brisque, which basically a “strawberry soup”. It really tasted something like a strawberry shake. I’m not really sure why it was in the starters, and not the desserts, but who cares, it was good anyway now that I was done with the starters, I ordered the Shrimp Plate, and the Lamb Shank… they were both so delicious. And to finish, I had the Tiramisu which was also amazing. By that time, I was so full!! But was worth every bite…

In the middle of our dinner the waiters interrupted everything and had a mini show, and introduced all the head waiters. That was a lot of fun, unfortunately, and of course because of stupid Murphy, non of us had their camera with them. Oh well…

Dinner was over, and most of us decided to retire early that night, as we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow in St. Thomas where we had our Snuba Excursions scheduled.

Day 5 - St. Thomas

A scenery picture where the Taxi driver stopped us.
it’s so beautiful!Today was probably one of the best days on the cruise so far. We had an excursion booked at St. Thomas. We had an early arrival at the port (about 8:00am)…
The water is so clear
it feels like you’re in a poolso we had to hurry up and get off the ship because our excursion was at 10:00am. So at 9:00am, we went up to good’ole windjammer and had some breakfast, Christina opted to stay in the room and order breakfast. We decided to try the RCTV Room Service dealy, it works great. Don’t be fooled though, some items that show up as free on the TV aren’t actually free (i.e. bottled water).
More of the clear water in St. Thoma Christina ordered 2 of them, and we got a bill for $8. yikes. Anyway, after WindJammer we headed right out of port looking for a Taxi ride, that wasn’t a problem, we got one in 2 minutes. He started driving to Coral World where our excursion was. One thing I thought was funny is that US Virgin Islands was a British colony, so even though all the car steering wheels are on the left, the cars drive on the left of the road also. Was a little bit weird to watch, but got used to it after a while.

The Taxi stopped us at a few stops to take pictures on our way, that was nice of him…. A mini tour of St. Thomas after that we arrived to Coral World. That trip cost about $20 / couple (which was about 20 or 30 minutes).
When we got to Coral World, we went to the checkin’ window and showed our vouchers for our Snuba trip, and two instructors met us and took us to the training place where they gave us our gear and gave us instructions and tips about snuba. We then headed to the beach, which was soo beautiful and clear, and got in the water, and there goes our snuba experience, it was so beautiful down there, I would highly recommend it to anyone. It’s worth every penny.

After we got done with Snuba, we came back to shore and hung out in the water, and got burned some more :), then headed up to see the rest of Coral world, which had an aquarium and several other sea exhibits.

It was about 2:30pm by then, so we decided to take a taxi back to the ship, as we were sailing at 6:00pm, and we didn’t know how long it would take get back, so we didn’t want to risk it. we made it back at a reasonable time, so we went around the shops in St. Thomas. (For parents with kids, and care about what they see, St. Thomas seems to be pretty liberal as far as what they sell in the stores , i.e. towels with nude women on them , etc … )

After the shops we headed back to our ship, we were tired, and headed straight for a shower.
And waited for dinner time. Meanwhile, I went out on the deck to watch the sunset and take some pictures. Before we knew it, it was time for our favorite part of the day… dinner in the dining room… ! Today, the theme was bananas, so everything had bananas in it… it was sort of interesting, but nothing too fancy… was still an enjoyable experience anyway.

After dinner, we went to our rooms for some freshening up, and then headed to the Schooner’s bar for some music and hanging out. I pulled an early night (around 12:00am) and went to bed.

Day 6 - St. Marteen

The beach on St. Marteen. It was awesome.
IMHO, it wasn’t as nice as St. ThomasToday was our stop at St. Marteen.
On a street in St. Marteen.
Where all the shops areMost of the girls had a horseback riding excursion, so the guys didn’t really have too much going on, so we had an late morning, and met up at WindJammer to have some breakfast. We then decided to step out of the ship to explore some of the city. Here’s a tip, if and when you get off the ship, don’t bother taking a taxi to town, you can walk there, it takes only about 20 minutes, and it’s really not a hard walk (and I don’t really like walking) . If you opt to use transportation, there are two ways you can get there, either by taxi, or by using the water transportation, the latter seems to be cheaper though, about $5 for a day pass on the water taxi, that’ll drop you right at the beach on the other side of the dock.
The “Mobile Hotels” in St. Marteen

We got to the city, and the thing that was amazing was that all three of soda, water and beer were all $1. that was probably the first time that I had seen such a thing, not that I’m complaining, but it’s pretty cool
We got to downtown, and all you see is shops on both sides, tons of people, very narrow streets with one lane of cars… (not sure how you get back haha)

We then stopped at a small restaurant right at the beach, and had a couple of beers. It was nice to just chill there and watch people walk by. The water was pretty warm, in fact warmer than St. Thomas, although it wasn’t as clear. Still great anyway.

The weather was pretty hot and humid, so we felt sticky and hot all day, it gets you exhausted a little faster than you’d want make sure you drink lots of water. After the restaurant we had gone through downtown, and since we didn’t really feel like going too much further we decided to head back to the ship, another 20 minutes later we were back in our staterooms, it was a nice little tour.

By that time, we were hungry, so we decided to head to WindJammer for a quick snack, so we did just that ! At that time, around 4:30, everyone had come back to the ship. We then went up to the deck and hung out until dinner, at which time we gathered our groups and headed to the dining room. Tonight, the highlight was lobster tail it was pretty good. Considering I hadn’t had lobster tail before, I don’t know how good it was, it sure looked good, and was served pretty well
Beautiful display of appetizers

One of the most beautiful displays of food I’ve seen!After dinner, we headed to the cosmopolitan which sort of a piano/jazz bar, it was pretty nice, that was the first time we had gone there, since we were used to going to schooner. As Dennis was walking around, he found an empty room with a piano, and it was actually open, so all our group moved to that room, and I played some piano, we ended up gathering a couple of people in that room too it was fun. Around 11:00pm it was about time for the midnight buffet. Which I took pictures of.
Yeah, that’s made of ice! I touched it!! Amazing!!It was amazing what they did in the dining room, they had all this beautifully decorated food, sculpted ice on display. They had a full hour dedicated to taking pictures of the buffet, so I took some of those. After that, they closed the buffet and made it available for consuming. Of course at that time it was only 12:00am, and we were still ready to party, so we went to the good’ole Schooner bar, which was sort of getting a little old because the dude was doing the same shows over and over, so instead we opted to go for the Dungeon and do some dancing, in there, we stayed till about 3:00am , we closed the place .. And then headed to bed! Phew! Full day.. But it was good!!

Day 7 - Another day at sea
Today is a day at sea. We partied pretty good last night, and today we were just kicking back. The weather forecast was saying that it was going to rain in the afternoon. So we took advantage of the nice weather in the morning to go out by the pool. We were on the way to the Bahamas, guess what the drink of the day was…. Yup … Bahama Mama!

We actually spent quite a few hours by the pool (mostly in the shade) but while we were there, we went to the WindJammer, grabbed some snacks, and some french fries, and brought them out by the pool, so we had our own little snacky time. During the time, different events were happening by the pool, water volley ball, belly flop contests, and some other game thingy which I didn’t quite understand, but a bunch of teenagers ended up winning about $3500 from it. so I guess it can’t have been such a bad game! It was getting close to about 2:00pm, so we went back down to our staterooms. Meanwhile, the clouds were getting pretty thick, and the wind was becoming stronger. By the time I went back up on the deck, the wind was so strong, I was hardly able to walk up on the deck, it was literally that strong, and it was also raining, so I got soaked. I think it’s a bad idea to hang out on the deck when there’s such strong winds. Seriously, you can get thrown overboard with the wind. It’s definitely cool to go outside and experience it once at least though.

Before the evening started, I decided to go to guest relations, and talk to them about early disembarkation, as our flight out of Miami was at 12:00pm, and we couldn’t have possibly made it if we had disembarked at 10:00am, so they gave me some color tags to put on my luggage, and told me that we will be disembarking at 7:30am, that was good news. It’s really a pretty simple process for that. Of course at that point, I was starting to think about the tipping and all that fun stuff. when I went back to the cabin, we had a bunch of envelopes with the titles of the different people we’re supposed to tip. I also had the option to put the gratuities on the sea pass, but decided to do the cash thing, as most of the crew and staff would prefer hard cash … who wouldn’t

That was pretty much our day until the evening part. In the evening, we dressed up again for dinner, as it was the second format night. That night, however, we went to the ice dancing show before dinner. And man!! How much can be done on such a small ice skating rink, it’s an awesome show!! Make sure you don’t miss it. we had to go pick up the tickets the first day we got on the cruise. The tickets are free, but we had to get them mostly to just reserve a seat. After the show, we went straight to the dining room, were Omer and Roxanne, our waiters were waiting for us. For starters they had crab cakes, and man those were good!! Couldn’t have more than one though, because I’d been munching all day, and I had to have some space have some of the delicious entrees, pork ribs, and Lamb Shank!! The food is excellent! And the service even more excellent, as always we were treated like we’re royalty it was beautiful. Of course during that dinner, reality had started to hit me, thinking that one more dinner like that, and then I’m back to TV dinners! ok not that bad, but pretty close, that is of course, not to mention going back to work!

After dinner, we met our whole group, and we headed up to the Dungeon to do some dancing. I was a little tired for some reason, so I hung out at the dungeon till about 1:30am and went to bed. Some of our friends hung out till about 5:00 or 6:00am and actually went to the hot tub at around 3:30am after the club had closed… yikes!
Well there goes that day.

Day 8 - Nassau, Bahamas
Today’s port is Nassau, Bahamas. We weren’t docking there until 1:00pm though. So it wasn’t really a full day there. That was ok though, we took advantage of the late morning, and we decided to go and try the main dining room for the first time for lunch, that was actually a really good experience, now I’m sort of regretting that I didn’t do it a little more often, as Windjammer gets a little old after a while, but I’m glad I did it at least once.
A Scenery from the Bahamas

After lunch, it was almost 1:00pm, and about time to disembark, we gather at the schooner bar, and headed out. The weather was closer to Miami, not as humid, the weather was actually very pleasant, it wasn’t very hot, and it had a nice breeze going on.

The beach we stopped at in the bahamas at the RIU HotelAs we headed off the ship, it was a little different, as it seemed like we had to go through 2 terminals, but it really wasn’t bar, it was a little more crowded than usual during the exit process though. Before we were completely out, we stopped and bought a round trip ticket for the water taxi (which was $6 roundtrip / person),
Cool Colored time shares in the Bahamas then we headed out, of course, as usually attacked by all the taxi drivers and tour guides offering to take us places. We went right through those, and followed the boat person right to his boat, we were got in, and we were on the way to the other side of the harbor where there was the shopping area, and some beaches. We ended up going to the RIU to check out the beach (it seemed to have been only free beach in that area that we were able to access). I didn’t go in the water, but my friends did, and they said that the water was colder, and the ground was rockier, so it wasn’t as comfortable to swim in there, but it was definitely nice to lay out on the beach, there was guys selling Rum Drinks in Coconuts, they’re pretty cool, I got a video of the dude cracking the coconut and making the drink in the coconut
awesome for buying souvenirs! it’s right next
to Senor Frogs
Umbrellas and Chairs were a little more expensive to rent on that beach ($20 for the umbrella, where it was only $10 in St. Thomas), so we decided to just find a shady spot by the trees, and the became a very good solution

After the beach, we decided to head back a little earlier to check out the market and the shops, we went into a series of shops where there was crafts and cool souvenir stuff, seemed like a great place to bargain for things, they had anything from purses, to necklaces rings, a lot of things hand-made. Even Coach and LV knockoffs

We bought a couple of items (some sea shells which were really cheap, and then headed back to the ship.
As soon as we got back, we started packing up some of our bags as we had to have those outside our stateroom for pick up before 12:00am, and most of us are planning to go and have one last party night before we snap back into real life, so we wanna be ready for that.

8:30 ’s here and we all know what that is… it’s diner time, yup, the highlight of the day.. Yet another surprise meal waiting for us. Of course dinner was amazing as usual. Unfortunately, I wrote this journal after the fact, and I forgot all that was there, but I know that the main entrée was a New York Steak, and that was good!!

After dinner, we headed out to the Dungeon to party up again. Yeah, you would think it’s the same stuff, but for some reason we still had tons of fun.

We called it a night at around 2:30am (my wife was up till about 6:00am, she actually didn’t sleep all night… a little too much for me, I wouldn’t have woken up for the disembarkation call)

The very next day, we woke up in the morning, and we had already packed up our luggage and tagged them, and put them outside our stateroom for the porters to pick them up. then we headed to Studio B to wait for our tag color to be called to get off the ship. It was a hard thing to do after all these fun things we’ve been doing, snapping back into reality is really hard. Getting off the ship took a little longer than it did when we stopped at different ports, that is because we had to go through U.S Immigration. All things considered, it still was a pretty smooth process. When we got cleared by customs we headed to the airport, and It looked like the airports were also prepared for passengers getting off the cruises, because when we entered the American Airlines terminal, a lady asked us if we had just gotten off the cruise, and we said yes, so she sent us to another line that had absolutely no wait. Not sure what was up with that? I wonder if it’s still the last part of the first class treatment we’ve been getting on the whole cruise!!!
Anyway, that was pretty much it, we got on the plane, and now we’re back home.

Day 9 - The way back and afterthoughts

Today we’re back at home, and vacation is over. I have to admit, it’s good to be home, but it’s not, it’s a very weird feeling. Now we’re back to TV dinners and doing our own laundry and making our bed. What kinda life is that??!
No seriously, looking back at the cruise, I think the price we paid for it was so low for what we got out of it. I think the ONLY vacation types that should exists are cruises, I really doubt anyone can get more for their money than they would in a cruise.

I am amazed by the things they offer on the ship for a measly $1000 / person, that’s barely the cost of a hotel for a vacation of a cruise ship… Of course, ideally, I really would love to be on a truly all inclusive cruise, where you don’t have to worry about any expenses at all on the ship, of course, except the shops, but all services and restaurant being all included.

Once we were on the ship for a day though, we figured out exactly what things cost, what things don’t, and soon enough we were pretty comfortable around the ship, and figured out all these details.