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.....