I remember this trip, but it seems like it was a wonderful dream! Sometime long ago! It went by waaaay to quickly. I've waited for our anniversary cruise for months and then it was over all of a sudden. Some people don't like cruises, this was my first one, and I LOVED IT! Amazing! I'd go back in a heartbeat!
I have to express how thankful I am to have such wonderful in-laws that I can fully trust to leave our kids with and that live so close by. This much needed vacation for PJ and I could not have been possible without their willingness to take our two lovebugs for six days. Excitedly both the grandparents and the kids were looking forward to spending time together and it sure sounds like they had a good time. I know that one evening Grandma promised that she would let Ophelia stay up all night and watch movies. Ophelia lasted till 9 pm :)
The morning of our departure Ophelia said: "Let's make a list of things that make us laugh! Tickling....Feeling ticklish..." That was the end of her list. It made me and PJ laugh all week long remembering he say that :)
Our cruise ship was the Carnival Triumph, which was the one that lost power for a week in the middle of the ocean only 7-8 months ago. Luckily for us since then the ship has been totally revamped and remodeled. It worked beautifully the whole time, no power loss (although I wouldn't have minded to have a power loss for a day or two, just so that we could get a free cruise out of it, like those people did!). The rooms, stairwells, amenities, restaurants, everything was flawless, shiny, clean, and beautiful, it was amazing. I kept walking everywhere on the ship with this overwhelming thought this all is part of a cruise ship! It is huge!
Day 1: Departure day.
After going through customs and everything, we got to our ship and found our room. Here is the view of Galveston from our balcony:
PJ is licking the sea salt off the rail. All natural, right? Everything was covered in salt outside of our room: the windows, chairs, floor, rails, and siding!
On our way out of Galveston we saw a few dolphins jumping out of the water following another smaller boat. That was pretty special!
We started our sailing right and headed for the lunch buffet. This is PJ by the condiments section, dazed:
I took a lot of pictures of the food...well...that is one of the reasons why people go on cruises for the amazing food, of course!!!! Here was my lunch:
And my dinner:
And PJ's dinner:
There was a choice of dining: one could either do the buffet-style or go to a sit down dinner. That's what we did the first night and our last night. But we liked the buffet more, because it was faster and there were more choices, not as fancy, but still soooo goood!
Pretty much every day of our trip we took a nap. What do parents do when the kids are away? Take naps!! When we returned to our room after dinner, a little octopus was awaiting us:
That was one of those little special things that made the cruise so wonderful, the towel animals! Also, it was fun to have met lots of eastern-European Russians working on the ship. I felt like I had an insiders look into things because of my Russian connections.
Day 2: Day at Sea.
This was the view I woke up to on our first full day while cruising:
Isn't that just paradisaical?
Of course we slept in, till like 8:30, which we hadn't done in years! Thanks to our early birds waking us up at 6 or 6:30 am... Then we had a lovely breakfast:
They had the best Salmon Eggs Benedict on earth! Maybe even in the universe :) Also....I am salivating as I'm thinking about it....the best Hot Cocoa EVER! Here is PJ filling up a cup:
We pretty much had at least two cups of hot cocoa a day. To compensate for the calories (somewhat) we did go and work out :) The gym at the cruise was quite nice too! It was right at the front of the ship. So as I was running on the treadmill, I would look up and see the endless blue Caribbean! Here was one of the pools:
We explored the ship on day 2. Ice cream cones on the top deck:
Our sailing map:
Beautiful sunset that night and this handsome guy I am blessed to call my husband:
Dinner by the sunset:
We partook of the cruise ship entertainment and watched a comedy show that night, as well as a dancing show. Here we are in the big theater:
Can you really believe that this is inside of a cruise ship??
Then we did some karaoke. We both picked a song. PJ did an awesome cover of Ledbetter by Pearl Jam. I picked a song that I thought I knew (Colors of the Wind from the Pocahontas movie), but it is one thing to sing along to a cd and completely another to sing without the words... But the fun group of youth that were with us did a great job supporting me though my first time karaoke-ing. The video of that flop may or may not have been permanently deleted ...
Came back to our room with our cups of hot cocoa and found this little guy:
Day 3: Progreso, Mexico
Of course we slept in once again :) And that meant we missed the early buses that took people to Chichen Itza ruins. So we just took it easy and explored Progreso and its surroundings on our own. Touristy places in Mexico are always full of people trying to sell you stuff. We got lured into a little cafe that had WiFi, which was exactly what we needed so that we could Skype home and check in on the kids. It was so sweet to hear their voices. Of course, PJ and I have both missed our kids immensely, we thought about them several times a day and kept thinking of words, songs, or things that reminded us of them. We both got teary-eyed hearing them say "I love you!" on the phone to us :) Then we Skyped my parents with video and showed them Progreso. I love that we have this technology to be able to do this!
We visited some old salt mine water basins in Progreso:
We tasted the water, it was salty. Then we were told not to taste the water due to bacteria...oops! Too late! We were blessed not to have contracted any unwelcome disease.
Then we visited a small site of ruins.
These have been kind of modernized and catolicized with crosses all over the ruins. But it was still a fun little place to visit!
On the way back our mini-bus driver took us to a little resort. We figured that it was a little scheme that the bus people had with the resort people, because we were never told about this stop we were going to make. The purpose of dropping us off at the resort was apparently so that we would buy the food there and alcohol drinks. PJ and I enjoyed some fresh coconut water, but other than that the scheme failed to get any more of our money.
It was starting to get really windy at the beach. You can see the waves and gray clouds:
We shopped around a Mexican market before heading back to the boat. Here is our big beautiful ship right before we left Progreso:
It was fun to see three nurses from Baylor Hospital in Fort Worth that I used to work with 4 years ago. We were standing in line to get on the shuttle that took us back to the ship and I saw them and had the hardest time putting their faces into my head and remembering how I knew them! But when I finally remembered, we talked for a good while and it was fun to catch up! One of the things we talked about was that one of the nurses was on her very first cruise as well and that she had a patch for sea-sickness. She mentioned that the boat rocking was minor so far and it wasn't bothering her or spoiling her fun. I didn't see them for the rest of the trip, but I wonder how she survived that following night, because we went through a huge sea storm and the ship was VERY rocky!
As soon as we left Progreso, the weather was cloudy, rainy, and really windy. It only got worse as the night approached. The ship was rocking so hard that it was difficult to walk! And we were the non-drinkers on that boat!!! When we went up for dinner, we passed by that swimming pool that was pictured earlier, the water in it was sploshing far and beyond the whole surrounding area. It was so bad that the pool was half empty the next morning! During dinner time I had to take a motion sickness pill because all the rocking started to get to me. The dining areas were practically empty, because majority of the guests chose to stay in their room, I'm guessing sea-sick. I talked to a Ukrainian crew member who told me that half of the staff were sick in bed and could not work because of the storm! At one point in time while we were eating in the dining area we hit a particularly high wave and the boat rocked so hard that all the stacks of china plates fell crashing into the floor scaring passengers and babies that were around it! It was pretty crazy! Our room neighbor who have cruised over 25 times said that this was the worst storm they've ever seen on a cruise! Lovely! I kept thinking about those poor people who lost electricity on this very boat for a week...
I definitely had a hard time sleeping that night. The walls all around our room crackled and popped. The boat would lean to the left and then to the right, rolling me in bed with it. Also, we would hit these sea pockets with the front of the boat and it felt like we went up and then quickly came down...BAM! I kept thinking that surely our balcony would go under water any minute. I looked out into the dark sea a few times and it looked scary....the water ridges were huge! It was not a fun night...I did fall asleep eventually. This is what I woke up to:
Day 4: Cozumel
We sailed into Cozumel safe and sound! Later we found out that due to the unrestful waters we were almost not going to be able to dock in Cozumel, but our skillful captain was able to park the boat and we got to step onto dry land, that was not rocking (despite the fact that even my brains were rocking left and right at that point of our trip).
There was a parade of towel animals on deck that morning. So cool! I need to learn how to do this someday:
Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and we were not able to go snorkeling in the blue Caribbean seas of Cozumel that day. In fact, all of the snorkeling excursions were cancelled for that day for all passengers. So, we spent a couple of hours along the shore side of Cozumel. Here is our ship again from shore:
Little streets of Cozumel. The inner city was a bit more peaceful than the walking stretch right along the shore. All those little shops trying to lure you in, sell you something, especially annoying were the jewelry stores that were just one on top of the other. But we found a quiet Pizza Hut in one of the inner city streets that had WiFi and called to check in on the kids again. I honestly was OK with not doing that, since we just talked to everybody the day before, but PJ just could not!
On the streets of Cozumel we bumped into one of PJ's friends from his Masters program, which was so random and cool. She was in Cozumel with another cruise line!
We spent only a few hours in Cozumel. It was rainy, cold and windy, so we headed back to our cozy ship.
We were greeted by this little monkey in our room:
We warmed up in our room, took a nice nap (no more crazy rocking to wake me up), went and worked out, then went to the sauna and warmed some more :) We had a light dinner, watched a magic/dancing show at the big theater and tucked in for the night.
Day 5: Day at sea
As the night progressed, the storm got smaller. So if the rocking was still present at first, by morning time it was almost gone. Lovely breakfast at the tail of the boat:
The clouds cleared up that day and we enjoyed lounging on our balcony. It was just such a good time to relax, sleep, talk to each other. It was a nice change of pace for PJ and I to spend one on one time together throughout this cruise trip, no interruptions from kids, or even our phones, or household chores or other things to be done.
Here's another huge open part on the inside of the ship. Very elegant and nice:
Later that day, PJ and I played some trivia games together and shared a huge piece of delicious cheesecake. Then we snuggled up in bed and watched a movie together. (When does this ever happen in real life? This whole cruise thing was so relaxing!)
Our dessert after dinner that day:
This is a picture of our balcony room:
We enjoyed our last sunset on the cruise:
All fancy in our white cruise ship robes:
Then I made sure to go to sauna one last time. Of course I met several Russian ladies in there! Also passengers on the ship!
We went to dinner in the restaurant that night and had sushi! This was our little room greeter:
Day 6: Arrival back.
Somehow we skipped the dress up night on the boat, but we didn't want to dress up while relaxing anyways, so on our last day we had to dress up because we were headed for the Houston temple afterwards. Here is our last cruise picture, all dressed up :)
It was sad coming back to reality! We had such a great time. Most importantly, it was so relaxing! We missed the kids a lot, but we enjoyed the time without them!
Some post-cruise issues we had to deal with:
- Dizziness. I was dizzy for about three days after we were back on dry land. I thought something was wrong with me since PJ didn't have that, until I talked to a friend who has cruised several times. Turns out that's normal!
- Weight gain. No regrets!!!
