Currently Listening The Old Record (1989-1992) By Dance Hall Crashers see related

Wow! Im on a cruise!!!!!! This is absolutely amazing. The whole boat is to totally do whatever you want all day and be pampered in any way you can imagine. I drove with my roommate Alan Bills and checked in with him this morning. He is an awesome guy. Hes a retired paper-mill chemist and still goes hiking all the time and is still super physically active. Very nice guy too. He and I had time to kill for a while while we were waiting for the time to lad the boat so we sat and chatted it up for a while at a McDonalds. His favorite thing to do is grow palm trees and he has even gone to Japan for a national palm tree convention. Pretty nuts!!!!! But he really is fun and ive spent most of my time with him. We still managed to get to the boat and loaded and ready about 4 hours early so we went and explored a little. What a cool ship. Its so incredibly pretty. There are soooo many different sun decks with sooo many pools and hott tubs and FOOD!!!! There is sooooo much food! We are talking a 24 hour buffet style place that has 3 different lines around the ship, a junk food bar, a salad bar, a pizzeria, a restaurant that was amazing…..everything. and all of it is for the taking. The only thing that has to be paid for is alcoholic drinks….and I wont be getting much use out of that. But there are shuffle board places, basket ball, volleyball, putt putt, casinos, theatres, shopping places….you name it…this place has it. It really is like a floating city. So he and I explored and decided to sit and have more lunch and continue chatting. We eventually were joined by Thomas and his girlfriend Michelle and our other 2 imported German friends Johanness and Wilkin. They are a goofy pair. On is fat and laughs all the time, the other tall and skinny and just naturally looks depressed even if he is laughing and both are really funny foreigners. So after we ate as much crazy good food and deserts and tropical fruit we filed out for a safety life raft instructions thingey. Pretty useless and by the time they finished the ship had started moving out to the gulf. So Alan and I relaxed on the bow and watched as Galveston and Texas and the US faded from view. It was pretty cool to watch. We are now moving at 21 knots and gently rolling back and forth. I LOVE the motion. It makes things sooo much more fun. Its just nice to be able to just sit back and relax for a while. Eventually Alan went back to the room and I caught the last of the sun and dance show in the blue sapphire theatre. I was ashamed. The announcer guy told everyone from east coast, west coast, Texas, US, Europe, north, south….ect to make noise. So he asked a west coast to make noise and people did and he asked a couple that yelled where they were from….they replied Houston…..I hung my head in shame. Yay for Texans and brains. But I only stayed for a few minutes and went and took a shower to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was AMAZING!!!! We sat at a very fancy dining table and since were in thomas’ party we got some very nice placements. Our room is also on the top floor right by the suites and entrance to the lobby. Probably one of the nicests rooms without it being a suite. But anyways. They folded our napkins in our lap, had a million forks…everything. And handed us a menu and told us to get whatever and however much we wanted. I have to say by far my favorite thing of the night was the smoked salmon sushi. It was amazing. It was smoked with a little lemon and dill and a crème cheese sauce and crepes and caviar….delicious. probably the best raw fish I have ever had. Then we all had a salad and then our main course. I opted for the sweet and sour shrimp….they weren’t shrimp at all…they were prawns and I had a bite of Michelles filet mingnon. All of it was delicious. Eating is definitely the highlight of the trip. The food is just top-notch. Then deserts came and was heaven on earth. I got the decadent chocolate cake with orange and lime sherbet. It was to die for.

Oh yeah!!!! Since I wasn’t drinking water I asked for a glass of milk….the guy came back with like an oversized thimble of milk. It was funny. Our whole table laughed at it. I had to get like 4 refills for the main course….oh well. It was still good and the service was great. After that Michelle wanted to go dancing so Alan and I took her. Michelle is fun. Shes like a teenager and has actually played Settlers of Catan and completely understands my addiction. We had some good laughs and stuff during dinner.

So we went to the China Town place and a band played all sorts of oldies type of songs that were just for fun to dance to. Thomas wasn’t up for dancing so he left us to Michelle and headed up to take pictures in the night. So we danced till we got tired and the place got crowded and left to go next door to the social lounge and Michelle and I proceeded to introduce Alan to Rap music and dancing. It was great. He still danced like an old guy but he was a cute old guy and still had fun. Funniest thing…they had all the single young people come to the dance floor and play a game in which the guys kneeled in a circle and the girls danced around them until the music stopped and they sat on their knees…the odd girl out had 5 seconds to pick a guy…any guy…and take him to the bar and have him buy her a drink.

Guess who was the first on to get picked….yeah…so I bought her a $3 Schmirinoff ice and talked for a bit and we went our separate ways. We had a laugh because I told her I had never bought alcohol in my life much less drank it. Good times. Fun parties. Tomorrow we have another fun day at sea and all that. Its late so I am going to bed a breakfast buffet awaits me in the morning.

8-13-06

So Im a little burnt. Actually just my legs from the calf down are burnt. Just happens to be the one place I forgot to put sunscreen. Dangit. Woke up this morning at 9:10 am because I decided to not go walking with Alan at 6:00 because I didn’t bring any gym shoes. Oh well. There are enough stairways and different decks to run up and down that my legs are actually a little tired. Ive been doing a lot of walking around and exploring. Watching everyone here is a lot of fun. There are people on this ship from all over the world and from all walks of life. It makes for a very interesting melting pot of people. However…everyone is overly polite and courteous. I guess nice vacations do that to you. I spent the majority of today alone. It was nice. Its pretty hard to find one person out of 2,500 passengers and 960 crew members. Woke up and ate a salad and ice cream for breakfast….great combination right. Ive never been a breakfast food person so I wasn’t all that interested in the food. This place was turned into a floating IHOP overnight. So I went and spent the majority of the day catching some sun and just relaxing. Its so nice because there Is no agenda….nothing I HAVE to do. Its fun to just sit back and say my biggest concern in life is getting a sunburn….which I did….oops….

So I found a nice sunny deck overlooking the main pool area and stretched out for about 3 hours. It was sooo comfy and nice. The sun is super warm and cozy and the super fast (30+ mph) winds on the upper decks keep you from getting gross and sweaty. I could get used to being a sun worshiper. After waking up I took a short break to find food. Find…food pretty much slaps you in the face here. You don’t have to look or find anything. The panorama grill was serving a whole line of Indian food and strangely I recognized most of it from Suman’s graduation party and remembered it as being very very good. So I sampled it all and loved every bit. Then I went back and tanned some more….that probably wasn’t the best idea….I’m not that burnt. Actually I kinda like the feeling of slight sunburns. Later on I met up with Alan and Thomas and Michelle and the Germans and we all sat around and chatted for a while.

Apparently Thomas has a black book he writes ideas down in and carries around with him and Michelle hasn’t seen it. So we are all sitting there chatting when suddenly Michelle lunges across the table and grabs it and takes off at a run. Thomas lunged at her and ends up in my lap and then scrambles off at a run jumping over a table and chair giving chase. Meanwhile us at the table are just cracking up. It was hilarious. Thomas chased her all over the boat trying to get that back. After he got it back he showed us the book and all it is is a bunch of Cellino drawings and ideas. Funny that all 3 of the Germans with us had an almost identical Black book like that. It must be a German thing…goofy Germans.

Afterwards Thomas and I found out that you cant work out in their huge gym unless you have tennis shoes on….so we ended up playing shuffle board. We found out we stink something awful at it….especially on a curved wooden deck with wind and water. But we still had fun.

Dinner was amazing. I had  Raw delta Prawns, they were quite awesome, a Caesar salad, a few lobster tails…ya know. Man I like lobster. Why cant it always be free dangit???

Then for desert I had an amazing raspberry cake/cheesecake thing that blew my world. The deserts here are amazing. And It came on top of raspberry sorbet which was about the best thing I’d ever tasted.

After dinner we went in our formals to the Blue Sapphire Theatre for a Las Vegas style show called the…I don’t remember the name…but it was AMAZING!!!! The dancing was professional to the max and the singing was great….but the sets were what blew me away. They were soooo large and extensive and there were no noticeable set changes. It was constant activity. A very small stage with rotating floor, at least 8 different back drops, a million different lights, disappearing entrances, disappearing stairways….everything. it was just insane! The tech crew and back stage crew must have been HUGE!!!! On of the most amazing shows ive ever seen. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well we should hit Cozumel around 6:00 tomorrow and I am going Snuba diving at 8:00am then shopping all day….so I need major sleep.

8-14-06

Hola Amigo!!!!

Cozumel rocked something awesome!! Woke up early to go Snuba diving off the coast of Cozumel this morning. Our guide/dive instructor said it wasn’t that great now….about 60-70% of its normal beauty…because of the hurricane that hit last year and pounded them for 3 days. But it was still absolutely beautiful! We took a short class and practiced in the shallow water for a bit and then set off to the coral reefs. I had a little trouble depressurizing my left ear so it was a little uncomfortable for a little while. Ive always had weirdness with that ear and sinus cavity but it was no real problem. It sort of cleared up after a few minutes. It still feels a little deaf and full of water but should be find in the morning.

The fish and coral were amazing. A lot of the larger corals had died but the fan corals and a few others were growing back and attracting fish again. The water was sooo clear and the fish so colorful everything felt fake. And the fish would swim right up to you until reached out to touch one. I did get to touch a big sea cucumber…like a big fishy slug….pretty cool. Our guide found a sting ray and got it to swim circles around us. Very cool animals. Poor Alan went with me and couldn’t be able to sing regardless of the weights on him. So after a while he gave up and swam along the surface or maybe just a few feet under the surface. Not as much fun as my 30 feet down and touching everything. Afterwards we took a taxi to the down town area to go walk around. There actually wasn’t much to do or see. Im not in the market for silver, cigars, or cheap wine so most of the shops did not look all that entertaining. Every other shop was a silver or diamond shop!! Its amazing seeing that much silver everywhere and for soooo cheap. Eventually Alan and I stopped at a real Mexican restaurant and ate some food. They had the best corn chips ive ever had in my life!! They were amazing. (ive used that word a lot…) Yay for real Mexican food. Eventually we got bored with the coastal tourist shops and started walking inland. It quickly turned into the dilapidated Mexican suburbs we are used to thinking about when we think about Mexico. But we found a few beautiful building. Everything is still torn up from the hurricane and all the clean up and repairs are done by hand. There are no bulldozers or backhoes….we saw a guy breaking up a concrete sidewalk with a 2 lb metal sledge hammer….not a jackhammer. So I guess repairs would take forever if you had to hand drive ever nail and pick up every brick by hand. But It was a very very cool place. Later we decided to head back to the coast line and walk back to the docks instead of ride a taxi back. We wanted to look at the city and people and had plenty of time to spare. Alan enjoys walking and it was probably a good 3.5 miles back along the coast. Very pretty scenery and good company. Getting back on the boat we met up with a crazy drunk girl. She was alright to talk to and we talked for a while. Drunk people are rather funny. I took a short nap after a shower and woke up about 30 minutes before dinner. Brought my camera outside to take pictures of the beautiful Cozumel city line with the sun right behind it….but my camera fogged over and the sun visibly sank below the horizon before I could get it to work. Bit I noticed a guy next to me taking the same pictures so I asked to borrow his SD card and copy them. He said he lived in salt lake for a while but wasn’t Mormon. Said he had been  just about everything but Mormon so we talked about it for a while. He was nice. Turns out he was the pirate kids dad. Small boat.

Dinner was amazing yet again and afterwards we all sat around while one of the camera guys played with Thomas’ camera. You know you have a nice camera when a professional photographer is tickled just to hold it and take a few pictures. Fun stuff. I went up top to the Lido deck for a little while to check out the Mexican buffet and party. We will be in Progresso in the morning. A fun filled day of beach and shopping  . fun stuff. 

8-15-06

Progress was pretty darn awesome. Actually we were only in Progresso for about 20 minutes. We took a guided tour through the city Merida. Our guide was incredibly awesome. He had a sense of humor a lot like dads and cracked jokes along the entire trip. But we also learned some really cool random facts. Progresso is home to the worlds longest pier totaling 6 miles into open water. They built the pier because at 6 miles the water is still only 15 feet deep. But the 6 mile mark is the site of the legendary dino killing asteroid so at 6 miles it instantly bowls down to almost 1000 feet deep. Also Merida is home to less than 30,000 people for 9 months of the year. The other 3 months it is home to over 1 million people due to vacations and people working through the summers. It has one of the largest population swells in the world. Merida has a lot of awesome architecture and beautiful cathedrals….despite the thousands of Myans killed to turn them catholic. Yay for church history and “missionary” work. They also have the only walmart that is built like a Myan temple. The city would not let walmart build unless they conformed to the architecture and color laws. So walmart went all out for it. Pretty cool walmart. Mainly the trip was a shopping trip. And I found some really cool stuff. Found a lot of fun stuff for Jessica. Like a Mexican jack in the box and a….wait….that was in Cozumel….I got her a princess cookie thing in Spanish with snow white on it. I think she will love it. Its cute. Then later on I found a store with some beautiful black ware hand coiled pottery for amazingly cheap prices. I bought on for 30 dollars that’s absolutely beautiful!! They had another room with some that were better painted and made…but they were 18,000 pesos = 1,800 bucks roughly. It was quite fun just looking. I showed it to the rest of the crew and explained why it had such value. Alan liked it and was happy I found something I liked. Oh and I found out its Alan not Allen today…that is the English way to spell it….like my middle name…and since he was born in England….ya know.

Went and sun tanned and ate for a little while before going and getting some sushi before going to dinner. The meat I had tonight was quite possibly the best chunk of cow I have ever eaten. I had a Chateaubrian in a crazy good Bernaise sauce and it was MAGNIFICENT!! It was perfectly tender and juicy and the spices just amazing. I ate sooo much tonight I couldn’t stand up straight. I could either stand up straight…or breathe….but not both together. I had to walk hunched over just to breathe. It was soooo good. After dinner Alan and I went to another show in the Blue Sapphire theatre called extreme country. They pretty much took the best oldies country songs and made dances and short stories out of them. Very good performance but the show stopper came when the fiddle player played “devil went down to Georgia.” Absolutely amazing. My mouth just hung open the whole time. He was the best fiddler I have ever seen.

Well tomorrow is the last full day at sea and is packed with excitement so I am going to bed.

8-16-06

Our last day on the Carnival ship Ecstasy. Pretty sad. I’m gunna miss the food and total relaxation. When I get home I instantly have to start packing for college. That’s going to be a big bummer. I know mom is going to go crazy with all that. But today I actually didn’t do much exciting. Wok up late…10:30ish still thinking it was 6:00 or 7:00. I heard Alan piddling around in the room and figured he had just woken up meaning it would be early. So I rolled over to go back to sleep and couldn’t fall back asleep. And I thought…”man…its so early why cant I fall asleep”….then It hit me….its not early at all. So I got up and moseyed around and decided to go sunning.

And that’s pretty much what I did allllllll day. Ate a little breakfast consisting of ham and ice cream….but not together. Then found a nice sunny spot by some teenage girls and laid out for a few hours. Woke up and at lunch with a few people I had met the day before. One of them is quite different when he is sober enough to know his own name….really no one drank excessively on this trip except at the Corona beach party. He had discovered the beauty of dollar beers and tequila in Mexico. His other friends weren’t drunk at all and played babysitter. Kinda interesting. But they were all sober and fun today.

Oh yeah….yesterday as we left Progresso we saw thousands of jelly fish in the water. It was insane. All over and different sizes for miles. It was like a carpet of them under the water….like in Finding Nemo.

After that I went back to the room and packed my things and then met Alan and Johanness in the Blue Sapphire  for a tour of the kitchens. They are the only things that matter on this boat so I might as well take a tour. And I learned some pretty crazy facts. The boat has 3,400 people on board. To feed that many people for 5 days they had and used….

12,000 lbs of beef

8,000 lbs of chicken…the chicken was gone on the 3^rd day….

7,000 lbs of fruits and veggies

7,000 lbs of pork product….5,000 of that was bacon….

1,000 gallons of milk

1,000 gallons of ice cream

and the show stopper…..48,000 eggs….all from one very busy chicken.

No not really but they did use that many eggs.

And the kitchens are roughly twice the size of a football field and cost over 2 million dollars.

Man the food was good…..

We got to see random fruit decorations…watermelon art carvings, ice sculptures, and all sorts of crazy machinery. Then I went and rented a Lary the Cable Guy book from the library because someone had already rented my Conn Igulden book….grrr….and I went for more tanning.

Pretty funny book but I got 3 chapters into it and the sun came out from behind the clouds…and I was out of it. Woke up 2 hours later with a little time to kill before dinner. Grabbed some sushi and watched 10 minutes of the black jack tournament and headed to dinner.

Had a Neurberg style seafood trio that was absolutely remarkable. Probably the second best thing I have had after the Chateaubrian….so I had 2 yay for free food!!! Im soooooo fat now!!!!! And I love it! Our waiters gave us a big picture of the ship and we had them sign it. They were awesome people. Imade and Inyoman. Both are from Bali, Indonesia. Very cool guys and super nice and helpful. We took pictures of them and said goodbye. Then Alan and I headed to a comedy/ fiddler show. The comedy was alright and the fiddler amazing. Same fiddler from the other night and he played alof of rock and roll favorites as well as the full version of Devil went down to Georgia. So that was cool. Im going to miss the constant entertainment. Tomorrow we are waking up at 6:00 and eating breakfast together for a last time and debarking at 7:15 to go through American customs. That should be crazy. There is a $1,000 fine for every Cuban cigar you try to bring into the country and the checking is pretty Thorough. So that may take awhile.

Goodnight.