Spring Break Cruise: Part IV

First stop: Grand Cayman!

"Pilar...what time is it?"

"I don't know, let me look at my phone. It can't be later than 9AM because that's what I set my alarm for...uh oh..."

"What?"

"Phone's dead...and it's 10:45!"

Allow me to backtrack. Today was our third day on the cruise and the first day to dock at a port, this one was Grand Cayman, in the Cayman Islands. The ship docked at 8AM, and we had put out our order for room service for breakfast the night before, so we had planned on waking up, getting ready, and eating breakfast quickly while giving the crowds leaving the ship time to die down. We had also assumed that our cruise director would come over the intercom with a "Good morning!" greeting as he had done the previous day. This did not happen, nor did our breakfast arrive.

We frantically got up and called the boys and then threw on our clothes and headed down to breakfast. We wolfed down our food and hightailed it off the ship. We had to take a boat from the ship to the island and made it to the island around 11:30. Our first order of business was to find a watch so that we could keep up with the ship time and make it back before the ship left. In case you've never cruised before, if you don't make it back to the ship on time, they'll just leave you. You have to pay out of your butt to get back to the ship and we didn't have enough money in our butts to consider doing that. Ipso facto, we needed a watch, Chris needed shades, and I needed some rum for my padre. (Here goes another tangent...)

Upon my leaving La Grange, my dad did some research on rum in the Caribbean. He discovered that out of all of the stops we would be making, the best rum would be found in the Caymans and would be called Seven Fathoms. This was his only request and since he paid for my trip, I felt obliged to honor his request. This is, yet another reason why our lateness was stressing me out.

Once we reached the shopping area which was right inside of the port, I hightailed it into the liquor store and was told that the rum I sought could be found in the original Seven Fathoms distillery which was two blocks down. We made our way down the busy street, dodging taxi recruiters and found the rustic looking little house that said "Seven Fathoms" on the front. There were two doors, neither of which looked very inviting, but we opened one of them anyway. This wasn't a store by any means, it was more of a workshop-looking place. We asked the people inside where we could purchase some Seven Fathoms rum and they told us to go around to the back and up the stairs. I forgot to mention that this place was right on the water and had a pretty cute little outside bar area attached to the back of it. We meandered around and up the stairs and opened the door to, yet another room that was not a public place where rum could be purchased. There was a guy sitting with a huge barrel and was running rum through a filter into the barrel. There was another guy in the other room who told us to go back downstairs to a little hut where a lady would be selling the rum. After venturing back downstairs, we finally found the place where we needed to go to buy the rum. There was a very nice lady who sold me the much sought after Seven Fathoms and I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to have this beverage for my daddy. Rum in hand, we ventured off to find a taxi and head down to the seven mile beach.

After a quick ride with our spunky little British cab driver, we had arrived at the beach. We had already glimpsed the water from our boat ride from the ship, but nothing could prepare us for the beautiful white sands and sparkling, crystal clear waters. Since we were on the seven mile beach, we had plenty of space to find our own spot where we wouldn't be surrounded on all sides by our fellow cruisers. We laid down our towels, lathered up in sun screen, caught some rays, and then got in the water.

THE WATER! The water was this incredible shade of light turquoisey aqua blue but was also crystal clear while you were in it. It literally was more clear than a swimming pool. We floated and swam and played and frolicked and just drank in the fact that we were in the Cayman freaking Islands.

After enjoying this beautiful beach for a few hours, we made our way back to the port and were back on the ship in no time. Because of all of the hectic activities that happened earlier in the day, we decided to chill and watch "The Town" in our room (great movie!).

The rest of the night was pretty chill. We were still exhausted, if you couldn't tell....

We went to dinner and then spent some time at the piano bar, which was awesome and was the source of much entertainment a little later in the cruise. If I remember correctly, this was the night that we saw the comedian perform in the Eagles Lounge. I believe it was not too much longer after this that we retired to our quarters.

Next stop: Mahogany Bay, Isla Roatan, Honduras!

Spring Break Cruise: Part III

Part III: Fun Day at Sea

I awoke to the sounds of Pilar stirring and a dark room. It wasn't until I felt the slight rocking of the ship and looked around that I remembered I wasn't dreaming....we were actually in this incredible room on board an awesome cruise ship sailing full steam ahead through the Atlantic. Before Pilar had a chance to open the shade, I grabbed the camera in order to give others the full effect of the room. Unfortunately, this blog won't let me upload that video for some reason. Just imagine waking up in a dark room and then someone hitting a switch and you hear "vvrrrrrrrr" as light streams in, and then there is the wide open ocean!

Pilar and I lathered up in sunscreen and our bathing suits and headed down to join the boys for breakfast. After a hearty buffet meal, we set out to find four available lounge chairs together....a daunting task. Since laying out was the popular option for the day seeing as how most people on the ship were pasty northerners, there were few available loungers. (Mid revision, Pilar reminded me that a great deal of the northerners were not indeed pasty, they were orange from their artificial preparation. The exception to this fake bake rule was the occasional chubby, middle-aged, speedo adorned, hairy man.) We did eventually happen upon a stack of chairs and were able to soak in the rays together.

Our location at this point was on the very top deck right behind the waterslide so obviously we found ourselves shooting down the slide. It was a pretty legit slide. Post waterslide shenanigans we witnessed a hairy chest contest. Yes...men who felt they had competitively hairy chests volunteered their talents in a contest that tested hair texture, hair smell, and dancing abilities. There were three female judges with ages ranging from early twenties to early seventies, and God bless these ladies. We were very entertained throughout the duration of this contest. Ironically, we still had an appetite when it finished so we headed down for lunch.

After lunch, Chris and Travis decided to beast it in the work out facilities while Pilar and I decided to return to our sun deck and enjoy cocktails. See!

I was lucky enough to happen upon a couple who had a bracket for the NCAA tournament and got to take a gander at all of the match ups. One of the sacrifices I made for the cruise was not putting together a bracket for March Madness....but seeing as how my spring break the previous year consisted of sitting in front of a TV watching basketball all week and talking trash to my friends about their brackets, I felt that a cruise would be a better trade off. We were even able to catch some of the games on TV when the TBS channel was working. Anyway, we caught the last of the rays coupled with residual beer and cigarette smoke from the feisty UMASS spring breakers next to us and then headed back to the room for our naps and showers.

This night on the cruise was our first formal night, so Pilar and I put extra effort into our beauty preparations (psh, as if that were needed). Our lovely, strapping men came to our room and escorted us down for cocktails. There was a happy hour in the casino/lounge part of the ship (and by happy hour they mean that instead of $10 the drinks were $6...ok maybe that's an exaggeration but drinks were pretty expensive.) We finished our drinks, then took some lovely formal pictures, and headed down to dinner.

As we strolled into the dining room, all of us looking like a million bucks, I commented on the grand Titanic-like stairwell that led down to the main part of the dining room. I said, "Wouldn't it be funny if we acted like Jack and Rose?" I didn't even get through that sentence before Travis and Chris hustled down the stairs and waited at the bottom for Pilar and me. We glided down the stairs and met our boys who met us with smiles and kisses on our hands. It was like something out of...well...Titanic. (Travis and I continued this reinactment every night at dinner and towards the end of the cruise, when people would see us coming, they would turn around and watch our grand entrance. It was pretty sweet.)

Dinner was lovely, as usual. We were entertained for the first time with a show put on by all of our waiters dancing on tables. I don't remember which song they danced to this night, but one of the songs was "Jai Ho" and another was "Apple Bottom Jeans". These waiters were pretty good dancers! After dinner we headed back to the room for some wine and a brief photo shoot and then we moved on to Latin dancing night. There was a band in one of the rooms playing all different kids of Latin music including salsa, cumbia, merengue, etc. Pilar gave us all dancing lessons and we traded off dancing with sitting and watching the smooooth older Colombian man with the legendary mustache work his magic. We stayed here most of the night and then headed back down to the club for more dancing. After dancing until our feet were ready to wither, we headed back to the room to have a quick gaze at the stars and then headed to bed around 4 AM. This was a very smart decision, considering we were arriving at Grand Cayman at 8AM.

"Oh well...we'll set an alarm and surely they'll come over the loudspeakers as a wake-up call."
...or so we thought!

...to be continued...

Spring Break Cruise: Part II

Part II: Come Sail Away!

Our excitement built as we rounded the hallways that brought us closer and closer to boarding the ship. Finally...we were on! They snapped a quick picture of each of us that they would use each time we entered and exited the ship and then we were free to go find our rooms.

Pilar and I had an ocean view room, which meant our room had a window, while the boys were in an interior room. We walked down, down, down the hallway on the ninth floor, made a left, and boom! There was our room on the right, next to a lovely, floor to ceiling sized painting of a beautiful beach. We opened the door expecting to walk into a pretty nice room with a small square window and two beds. What we saw rocked our worlds! Not only did we have a sitting area with a couch, coffee table, minifridge, wet bar, etc, we had a window that took up the entire far wall and overlooked the BOW OF THE SHIP! We could sit in front of that window and have a panoramic view of the open ocean. The window also had an automatic blackout shade complete with a switch for moving it up and down. So legit!

So, after drooling over our room for a little while, we joined the boys for a little meal, went to our emergency drill, and then donned our bathing suits and headed to the "sail away party". We were very lucky that our rooms were on the same floor as the Lido Deck which had the dining rooms with all the buffet lines and 24 hour food places as well as the swimming pools, hot tubs, bars...basically it was where all of the action happened during the day. Pilar and I were on such a mission to get our long islands at this point that not even the mob dancing to the Cupid Shuffle could get in our way! Finally, long islands in hand, we headed up to watch the ship debark from Miami. After a little while the boys met up with us and we had our first official toast on the cruise as a group!

We soaked in the last of the rays and enjoyed some hot tub times before heading back to the room and getting cleaned up for dinner. We were lucky to have the later dinner time at 8:15pm, especially since we could never seem to make it on time even then. Our table was on the bottom level of the beautiful Lincoln Dining Room. We had a booth on the edge of the room which was great because we were still a part of the action, but had our privacy at the same time. We had the same waiter every night, Jose, who was from El Salvador. He was always very cheerful and provided us with great service. The food offered and served at dinner was incredible as well. There was always a great selection and it was always fresh and well prepared. We did have the fortune of sitting at the table next to Sarah Palin's voice twin who spoke very loud and about things like poopy diapers. It definitely added a little something!

After dinner, we headed back up to our room where we made a toast to the night and then we headed down to the Eagles Lounge for karaoke. Pilar and I are seasoned karaoke singers, so we jumped at the opportunity and signed up to sing "Faithfully" by Journey. Unfortunately, I had to use the ladies room which was pretty far down the hall, and they called us before I got back. Travis stood in for me and did a fantastic job, especially for not knowing how the song went, but insisted I replace him when I arrived back. Pilar and I finished strong, I believe, and captivated the audience with our glowing stage presence. When we tired of karaoke, we headed over to the club to dance a jig. Now, I had some preconceived ideas about how a club on a cruise ship was going to be, but those ideas were DEAD WRONG! The DJ in this club was one of the best I've ever heard. He played an awesome mix of new and old music that made us never want to leave the dance floor! Pilar and I were very lucky to have two very good dancers accompanying us, so it was always hard to leave the club at night. After a few hours of shaking a leg, we retired to our quarters.

Fun day at sea tomorrow!

...to be continued....

Spring Break Cruise: Part I

As promised, I'm going to write about our cruise partly so that everyone will know how AWESOME it was and partly so that I can remember all the little details that made it so memorable :)

Part I: The Drive

The story begins on Friday, March 11th. I finished teaching for the day and headed down to La Grange to wait out the Houston traffic. I got a pedicure with my Madre and then hit the road headed for H town. I met Pilar at our friend Katie Mac's house and had a fantastic dinner with her and her parents. That was such a pleasant surprise...Katie's parents were a riot and I'm so glad I got to see her before we left! After dinner we headed over to Travis' house where he and Chris were waiting. (Travis and Chris are Pilar's friends from her years at St. Thomas Episcopal School in Houston. They've all been friends since elementary school... it's really cute.) After catching up, we took care of some last minute business for the cruise and then hit the sack.

On Saturday, we woke up before the sun and got ready for our journey. In order to save a little money, we had decided to drive to Florida and leave from Miami instead of Galveston. Something that had not occurred to us up until this point was how in the WORLD we were supposed to fit all of our luggage inside of Chris' car. Thanks to all of our masterful packing skills, we managed to get every piece of luggage inside the car. Little Pily was all surrounded!

After a quick breakfast stop at Mickey D's, we were on our way! I just have to give so much credit to the boys for drive the WHOLE WAY! Chris' car is standard which meant I couldn't drive and Pilar has dabbled in standards but didn't feel capable of flying it solo, so our manly men beasted the drive between the two of them (with the help of our friend, Red Bull).

Seventeen hours, three ipods, at least 30 oz of Red Bull, some gas station parking lot dance parties, a Lady Gaga rage, a shady Orlando gas parking lot near death experience, many naps, Travis near hallucinating and falling asleep at the wheel, and something north of a thousand miles later, we had arrived at Ft. Lauderdale! We made incredible time considering we made the drive in seventeen hours and it was supposed to take around twenty! We did lose two hours thanks to daylight savings time AND traveling across time zones, so instead of arriving at 2 AM we arrived at 4 AM. Pilar's Aunt Jenny was our gracious host and provided us with warm beds which were very much appreciated after such a long drive.

Sunday morning we awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! We had a leisurely breakfast and then crawled back into the car to head down to Miami. We stopped at the friendly, neighborhood Publix (we were very amused with the name) to pick up the necessities like wine, champagne, and Red Bull, and then we hit the road, once again.

It was a beautiful day in South Florida and the perfect opportunity to jam out to "Miami" by Will Smith. One of the most beautiful things for my eyes to behold, after such a long journey, was our ship: the Carnival Valor, waiting patiently at the port for its guests. We were lucky enough to get a parking spot in the lot right next to the ship so we just walked across the street, handed off our luggage, and got in line. Everything went very smoothly and before we knew it, we were taking a picture in front of a cheesey sunset backdrop and boarding the Valor!

....to be continued.....