Saling Home!

It's Friday and we are sailing back to Galveston.  We will arrive there around 8:00 am Saturday morning and get ready to disembark.

Today we sat out by the Adults only pool.  Just means there were no children under 18 and more people our age....(and size).   Cozy and I got in the pool and exercised a little.  Then we all four sat in our chairs for a while and read.  Very relaxing....

I think we may have eaten another of Guy's burgers....for the third time this week.  We spent some time trying to get all of our stuff back into our luggage.

Our last dinner was so fun.  The waiters all sang "Leaving On a Jet Plane" and danced around the tables.

There are many more pictures and memories I could share but I have already taken three posts.  It was a wonderful trip with wonderful friends and I am so glad we were able to take this vacation with them.  

Smooth sailin' all the way!

Donna

More of Our Cruise Adventures

Tuesday was the day we pulled into Isla Roatan, Honduras.  We had booked a zip line excursion for this day.  None of us had ever zip lined before but we were pretty pumped about it.  We reached the zip line station and got strapped into our gear.  We looked so cute!

INCOMING.......

This is Cozy....we were pretty high up!

After we landed on top of the roof of a building, we went down to this beach and enjoyed a swim.

Then it was back to the ship for dinner and a show and look forward to our arrival in Belize tomorrow.

The ocean was so shallow around Belize that our ship had to stop 5 miles out from the shore and we had to be tendered in.

Among the shops on the dock, we found this refreshment station (bar) and look what was hanging from the ceiling.  I went over to the bartender and said that we were from Missouri and he said the owner is from Missouri.

Our Belize excursion was a bus tour through Belize City and then an Airboat Adventure.
  

This was one of our Airboat guides.  He was pretty funny.  

There were supposed to be manatees in the lake but we didn't see any.  We did see a crocodile which the guide teased with a white flower and made him jump out of the water right by our boat.

It was an amazing ride, skimming across the lake.  We arrived back at the outpost and boarded the bus back to the ferry then back to the ship.

It's Thursday and we arrived in Cozumel.  We walked down the walkway around the duty free shop to get to our Beach Buggy for our drive around the island.  We were in a caravan following our guide in his buggy.

Our first stop was for snorkeling.  Gary and I have snorkeled once before many years ago, but Cozy and Steve have never snorkeled.  It may as well been our first time, we had to be taught all over again.

We saw some pretty cool stuff under water.  I just wish I had got some better pictures with that disposable underwater camera.

We loaded back up in the beach buggy and headed out to the side of the island that is owned by the government.  Hotels are not allowed to be built on the beach.  The place we stopped at was a hotel but it had been built before the ruling.  However, this hotel has no electricity.  Does have a beautiful heart shaped pool, though.

                                 

A Mexican meal was served to us under the white tent.....fajitas, spanish rice, beans...very yummy!

We were told not to go out more than 3 feet because of a drop off.  The waves were pretty strong, too.

Then, back in the buggy to drive through San Miguel on our way back to the ship.

While we were on our trek, another ship, Carnival Breeze, pulled in beside our ship.  

Back on to the ship we went to play more Trivia games.  As we sat in the lobby, I took these pictures of the elevator  and the ceiling of the atrium.

It really was a beautiful ship.

Next post....Friday, last day on the ship!

The Big Float Trip of 2015

Actually it was a 7 day Western Caribbean Cruise; however, Gary prefers to call it a float trip.  Whatever!  I'm just glad that he was willing to go.  

For years, I have been talking about and wanting to go on a cruise.  Gary was less than enthusiastic about it.....really just didn't want to.  But Cozy and I were talking about wanting to do a cruise and she asked Steve and he said he would, so I asked Gary...again...and lo and behold, he said he would.  I'm telling you, retirement has made a world of difference in this man.

So Cozy and I got started planning the trip so we could just tell Steve and Gary when and where to show up.  We first thought that we would go in September, but then we discovered that is hurricane season and found one that left May 30 and went to the same ports.  We wrestled back and forth.....September or May???  We finally settled on May 30 and had to get busy because we had to have passports and that takes a while to get them back.  As it turned out, we got them in plenty of time.

Since we are newbies at the cruise thing we called a travel agent friend and she was great to walk us through the process and get us all set up.  Now we had to decide what we want to do on our excursions at each port and get them booked.  Got that done and then we were ready to go!

Steve and Cozy came by and picked us up at 5 am Friday morning, May 29th and we headed for Houston, Texas.  They dropped us off at Wendy and Doug's and they went to Curt and Amanda's to spend the night. Then they came to get us Saturday morning and we headed for Galveston.  We had a parking reservation at EZ Cruise Parking, and it was pretty easy to find.

First glimpse of our ship!

Waiting for our shuttle bus

Good lands, that is a big boat!

Our rooms were so nice...much roomier than I had imagined.  We had balcony rooms which we were very glad for.

Comfy bed and pillows

Lots of drawers and closets for storage

Gotta have a good bathroom!

Views from our balcony.

Our ship set sail at 4:30 pm on Saturday.  We unpacked and got settled in our room.  Our dining time was 8:15 pm in the Restaurant.  We had preferred 6:00 pm so we asked the Maitre'D if there was any way to change it.  She said she would check and let us know.

What is this, you might be asking.  Well, Cozy and I ordered Strawberry Soup for an appetizer and this is what the waiter brought.  We just looked down at it and then looked at each other.  Then we started laughing.  The waiter brought us spoons and we just looked at him.  We took pictures because we couldn't believe this was Strawberry Soup.  Well, that stinker of a waiter brought little pitchers of creamy soup and poured in the bowl over this little blob, chuckling the whole time.  It was very good, by the way.

Sunday morning we walked around exploring the ship.  Found the Guy's burger joint which we would frequent a couple or three times this week.  It's the Guy from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on TV.   They were the best burgers ever!!

Lido Deck aft pool.

Found the mini-golf course and the shuffleboard court.

This was not mine and Cozy's game.  We couldn't push that little round thing to the opposite end of the court.  So we sat that one out and just watched the guys.

Each evening when they came in to turn down our beds, they left a little towel animal.  We loved them.  Monkey and Sting Ray are my favorites.

Monday morning Cozy went up to the Lido Deck and reserved us some deck chairs so we could sit by the pool and read.

We were just getting comfy, when the clouds started getting dark and the wind started blowing and, sure enough, it started raining.  Wouldn't you just know it?  So we gathered up our things and took shelter until the rain stopped.  Then we went back to our chairs.  And it started raining again!  We went back to shelter a second time.  After the third time, we gave it up and found something else to do.....inside.  Might have been a Trivia Game.

We did several Trivia Games, but were pretty pitiful on most of them.  Didn't do too bad on 80's and 90's.  Our best one was country music.  We thought we had it made when a couple of kids who said they knew the newer stuff played on our team.  We knew we could ace the older stuff and most of the songs were oldies.  We had to name the song and the artist.  We got 37 our of 40 right!  Woo Hoo!  Trouble is someone else got 38 out of 40. Boo!  We missed out on winning the coveted 24k gold plastic ship on a stick.  So close!  We thought we might have another chance at the Disney trivia but they played songs and we had to name the movie.  It really surprised us that we did so bad.  :(

That evening we started getting ready to go to dinner around 7, but we found a notice in our mailbox that our dinner time had been changed to 6 pm.  So, needless to say we arrived at our new table an hour late.

We tried to explain, but Santiago, the head waiter, was not very understanding and would not let us have an appetizer.  Bummer.  But, after that night we were there promptly at 6, so he forgave us and was actually pretty nice.  Our favorite waiter was Eusibeu, from Romania. He was 24 years old and this was his first contract.  He is trying to earn money to go back to Romania and buy a house and car.  He was so funny and cute.

Antonio, Eusibeu, Santiago

 This is getting so long, so I think I will continue the Jones/Wallace adventures in the next blog post.

To be continued......