Welcome to my blog!! Cody and I went on our first cruise on March 4th through March 11th!! It was an unique experience for both of us. We really weren't sure what to expect on the ship. But overall we had a lot of fun. We were on the cruise for 7 days so there is a lot to talk about!! We visited four ports and were on the ship a lot. Therefore, I decided to split my blog up. I already wrote a blog about the ship we were on in general and all the different areas of the ship. Here I am going to write about our experiences on the ship, and then I am going to write a blog for each port that we went to. I thought this was a better idea than trying to write one MASSIVE post. Because trust me... I have a feeling each post is going to be long by themselves!!
Here we are in Tampa after Cody's aunt dropped us off at port. Before she dropped us off she took us to a Wynn Dixie grocery store to pick up some drinks for the cruise. All of the drinks you buy have to be in your carry on... so you can see Cody rearranging things here!! It's a good thing we weren't trying to smuggle in alcohol because they checked each and every one of our bottles to make sure that they were sealed and didn't have alcohol in them. We were going to have lunch with Cody's aunt but due to a snow delay in Ohio our plane got in a little late... so we ended up heading right onto our ship. A couple things I didn't realize ahead of time... they told us we could board between 12:30 and 2:30 and then the ship sailed at 4. Well I thought that we could get on the ship anytime before 4... but this was not the case!! We had our safety drill at 3!! Had we been late I don't know if we would have gotten on! Also we HAD to have our passports to get onto the ship. This was a little bit misleading because I had read that if you sail out of and then back into the same US port you don't have to have a passport. Cody got his passport just for the heck of it... BUT in order to even get on the ship you needed it!!! We had to go through a security check to get onto the ship and if we wouldn't have had it they probably wouldn't have let us on! ALSO we needed it to go through customs after we got off the ship! They need to be more clear on that.
Here is the first picture we took of ourselves when we got in the ship. First we went to our room (if you'd like to see our room please check my other post) and then we went to explore the ship. We are on the 10th floor in this picture. You can also see the other cruise ships that are loading their passengers in the background. For the first couple of days we sailed side by side with a Celebrity cruise line ship.
Here we are waiting in line for dinner the first night. We had about a 10 or 15 minute wait for dinner that night, because we choose anytime dining. I was a little bit worried that we were going to have to wait for dinner every night, but it turned out that first night was the only time we really had to wait for any length of time.
Here we are at our dinner table in Truffles. That night we choose to sit with two other women to eat dinner with, but we never shared a table with anyone again. It was really rocky in Truffles restaurant!! You could really feel the boat moving there. It was really bad the first and fourth night.
House keeping came into our room twice a day. First during the day they would clean up our room, and then at night they would pull our sheets down and leave us a day planner for the next day and a towel animal! The Fun Times listed all the activities and information that you needed to know for the next day. It also had an area that you could rip off that had all of the times and locations listed so that you could carry it around in your pocket.
Here is our first towel animal! I thought they were so cute so I took a picture of all of them. This is our rabbit.
On the second night we found this guy hanging up like that!! I thought the monkey was too cool.
The next night we found a swan in our room. I was a little bit disappointed, because on another night on our cruise we had another swan animal. Or we got a duplicate. I was hoping for a new animal. We got five towel animals all together, because on two of the nights we went to bed early or before our guy could come into our room for the night.
Here is our last towel shape. It's a heart! Isn't it sweet. On the last day at sea they had a towel folding class and a book on how to make all the towel animals for sale. I really wish that I would have gone to the class because I think it is really cool. It would have been fun to make towel animals... maybe next time I go on a cruise I'll look into it.
The casino!! We did not do so great in the casino... and I don't think anyone really did. The only luck that I had was with this machine.
This is the game where the quarters hang on the edge and you throw another quarter in to try to push the other ones off the ledge. Well... Cody and I were walking by this machine and I stopped at it. I sat down and I was like... hrmm should I play?? Then the ship rocked and about $7 worth of quarters dropped. I was like yippeee!! Looks like I am going to play.
As you can see there are some chips and key chains in the machine. We ended up winning a free drink, a t-shirt, and a key chain... along with walking away with about $7 in quarters! If only I had stopped there... haha. You can't see it in this picture but they also had $25 in singles bundled together that you could win. There was one machine that had the bundle really close to the edge. But can you see on the right hand side there is a little lip there... well the bills pretty much got stuck under that. SO many people were playing and trying to win... but as we were leaving the ship we had to walk through the casino and I looked at that machine and the $25 was still there... no one had won it. I gave back my $7 and put another $10 in trying to win. Other people were spending money like crazy trying to win.
Here we are on the first formal night!! I'm so proud that I was able to wear this dress! It was itchy though, because of the bottom... so I actually took it off after dinner. But I was still happy!!
Oh this was the lobster night too!! I don't even know why Cody was looking at the menu. We already knew what we were going to get from the moment we walked into the room. Lobster and jumbo tiger shrimp please!!
Here I am waiting for our waiter to take our order!
And here are the two lobsters that I ate!! Cody had two as well. They were really good!! And so were the shrimp. I think that was probably my favorite dinner night. After we ate our first dinner we asked our waiter if we could have another lobster each. He brought us out another whole dinner!! I was so stuffed I couldn't even eat my last bite of lobster! Don't worry it didn't go to waste. Cody was all about snatching it up!
Good eating!! I'm glad that our lobsters came out tasting good. It appeared that the kitchen made up all of the plates of food at the same time, and then just heated up the food to give to us. Because at other times during the cruise we asked for just an additional part of the dinner and they brought us out the whole dinner. I felt bad in those cases because I ended up wasting a lot of food. But not this night though!! I did feel guilty a couple of nights and I couldn't eat my food. This happens to be a lot when I eat shrimp, mahi mahi, or apparently snails. I feel bad eating dolphin! I've heard that mahi mahi is really good... but I look at it and I think of Flipper and I just don't have the stomach to eat it. This happened to me on the cruise when I was trying to eat a luke warm shrimp and snails!! I like hot shrimp, but for some reason warm or cold shrimp are starting to make me feel bad and I just don't have the stomach for them anymore. :( which sucks because I love shrimp!! Stupid Shark Tales... I wish I'd have never seen that movie!!
I hate it when I ask someone to take a picture for me and they take it the long ways.
This is a perfectly good picture... too bad that you have to turn your head sideways to see it. I wish I knew how to rotate it on here, but I can't figure it out. Some of my pictures below automatically rotated. I don't know why this one didn't. But anyways... this is Cody and I all dressed up in the entrance of Truffles.
This is the next day at sunset. It was overcast a lot during our trip so we didn't really get to see any spectacular sunsets. This was probably the best one we saw. You can see the clouds over in the distance. I guess a couple days before we went on our cruise a cold front/storm went through the area. So it was in the mid 70's and 80's on our trip. We only had one really hot and sunny day during our trip which was the day we went to Roatan.
This picture is a little bit dark, but here is Cody outside.
And here is just a picture of the sunset. We never saw the sunrise. We had an inside room so we never knew what time it was outside because we didn't have any sun light in our room. So we never knew what time the sun would start to rise, and we never got up early enough to check. The sun usually set around 7 pm which was the time that we went to see the night time shows... so usually we missed it.
Here was our favorite area!! This is the adults only Serenity lounge! There honestly weren't too many kids on the ship, or at least they didn't annoy me at any point. Except when they were playing in the pools every now and then. But we loved this area because of the soft padded chairs. This area was soooo much more comfortable than the other other sitting areas in the ship. We came here everyday and sat around. I tried getting a tan but it didn't really work out too well. My chest got burned and my legs got burned on another day but that's it. Today my forehead is peeling really weirdly!! Cody on the other hand burns quickly!! The poor thing... he was a lobster a couple of times.
Here we are on the next formal night. The first formal night was on Monday. This formal night was on Friday. So you can see that there are some gaps in my blog... which will be filled in with the individual ports that we went to in future blogs.
My bangs were so hard to get to stay put!! They just wanted to move around. I spent a long time straightening my hair and putting on my make up! One night we went to walk outside to stand out on the deck and it was SUPER windy! My hair instantly started blowing around. I immediately screamed and ran inside. On this night I told Cody we should go outside and watch the sunset... and he laughed at me and said "Pshh you're not going outside" and I was like... ohhh yeah... that's right! I'm not! Haha
I wanted a picture of us on this staircase soooo badly!! They were taking professional pictures or ones that you had to buy from Carnival on it all week so I was worried I wouldn't get a picture on it, but luckily this night I did!! Yippee!!
Here we are heading to the late night shows. This night I did wear my dress around for the night. Cody was upset because I was getting glitter all over him haha.
Here we are in front of the fancy elevators. There were some elevators that were made out of glass that you could view the ship as you went up. You can see on in the background of this picture.
I couldn't resist... every time we walked by I had to stop and get a picture on the staircases!! Cody truly was a trooper! He only complained/whinnied about the pictures a little bit. There were a few times when he got mad at me for it, but I think he'll be happy that we have the pictures now!
Here is Follies! This is where most of the big shows and entertainment was at. This picture is from the Welcome Abroad Show which was no the first night. We got there a little late so we were in the back on the side. Our ship director, Kirk, talked during the show. He was the guy that coordinated all of the activities on the ship, and he was on the morning show that played on our tvs. Anyways, back to the welcome abroad show. Kirk says ok I need all of the married guys to stand up. So all the guys stand up, and he says ok you can sit down as I go through these questions. Guys you'll know when your out is. So first he goes... "if you love your wife more than anything stay standing". Half the guys sat down. Then he goes "if you love your wife more than anything and you'll do anything for her stay standing"... more guys sat down. The next question was like "if you love your wife more than anything and you'll do anything for her stay standing and you're willing to have everyone on this ship know who are you stay standing." At this point a couple guys tried to sit down and their wives wouldn't let them. Then Kirk said, "if you love your wife more than anything and you'll do anything for her stay standing and you're willing to have everyone on this ship know who are you, and you have full mobility in your body stay standing." At this point there were about 10 guys standing, and Kirk says congratulations you have just volunteered to act like Tarzan and profess your love to your wife to everyone on board. All of the guys went through their Tarzan routines and we eventually voted on the guy that we thought was the best. Meet Earl! He got up on stage and he was just hilarious! From the first question he answered we knew he was going to be so funny!! Kirk asked him where he was from, and in his southern accent Earl goes "from right back there." It was so funny!! Then throughout the whole thing he was just cracking up the room. Kirk had him repeat after him to profess his love to his wife. So one line Kirk goes "I love my wife Rosie more than anything" And Earl goes "Oh really? Me too!" Then then next line was "and I'll do anything for her." And Earl goes "And he'll do anything for ya." Everyone was cracking up. He was so quick and automatic with his responses it was just great. He was the instant celebrity after that and everyone loved Earl. He went on the morning show on both Wednesday and Saturday. The show was only on 3 days. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday... and it was Kirk and the assistant director, a girl named Jamie, talking about different stuff on the ship. People were able to call in to talk to Earl and he was around places taking pictures with people. The last night we walked past him and I wanted to get a picture with him and his wife but they were distracted and I felt awkward sticking around to ask for a picture. But Earl was great!!
Speaking of pictures here is one of the 10 pictures that Cody took on our trip. This was the last night in Follies. We watched the Big Easy Show. It was supposed to have been performed the night before, but for some reason it got canceled. They had one of the singers for the show get up on stage and sing some songs. He described the life on the ship saying that people work on 6 to 9 month contracts at a time and that they don't get to see people from home, and that they miss birthdays and other stuff like that. Then he started singing the song Home by Blake Shelton, and I felt really bad for all of the crew. It was a depressing song and I felt bad that all of these kids were stuck on the ship all the time. He kept singing songs like that.... and everyone in the show was like... ehhh... ok... it was pretty terrible honestly. After a half an hour or so the cruise director got onto stage and started reading a list of the top ten stupid questions guests ask to crew members. You know you're in a pinch when you get on stage and start reading lists like that to your guests. That is like the cardinal sin of working in Guest Services. You are never supposed to make fun of other guests in front of guests!! I was pretty surprised by it. The next night they showed the Big Easy Show which was supposed to have played that night... and it was just excellent!! It was so much fun and it was just great. It was one of my favorite shows!! Also there was a guy named Marcus Anthony ... not to be confused with Marc Anthony... he was an older man that was so energetic and exciting. He sang mo-town songs. We liked his show so much that we went back to the second show that night. It wasn't so great the second time around because we already knew what was coming... but it was good fun though. We really liked the shows. Later on that night another show played which was called the Carnival Legends where people from the cruise ship got up and sang songs from legends... like Madonna, Elvis, Elton John, Brittney Spears... and etc... The one comedian was like yeah it's like them saying "Yeah we're out of shit what do you got?" It was pretty funny!! We loved the comedy shows. We went to them every night. The first couple of nights they had two women that rotated shows, and then the last nights they had two guys that rotated shows. One guy was a ventriloquist and I think he was my favorite!! He was super funny!!!
Overall I think that we really enjoyed our cruise. It was so relaxing and peaceful. Without Internet or phones or any real problems... we just laid around on the deck and relaxed everyday. When we were in the ports we walked around and had fun. Cruising is very convenient because you don't have to worry about going somewhere for dinner, and after about 5 pm there is a ton of good entertainment on the ship. I don't know if it would be the only way I would ever vacation in the future... but I will probably go on another cruise at some point. I would like to go to the eastern Caribbean, but it will probably be a while before we do that. Cruising is pretty expensive, and there are a lot of other places that I would go to first before I went back on a cruise again. It definitely wasn't bad... anyone that tells you a nice week long vacation in the Caribbean wasn't good is a spoiled brat... but I wouldn't say that it's the only way to travel either. On the whole it was really good and I loved spending so much time with Cody. We were together constantly and I'm so glad that we were on the cruise together. It's definitely not the place for a single person. Cruises are very couple oriented... I think we were a little young to cruise right now. It seems like it is more aimed at married couples, but I'm still glad that we did it. It was a great spring break!!
