cruisin' along...

ever been on a cruise? well, i just had the privilege of going on my first a week ago and am now going to bore you with the details of it. :-) if you want to skip all this text and go straight to the pictures, click here.

day 1: mom drives me and my friend down to galveston to board the ship. we arrive to find our itinerary has changed and we're not going to jamaica afterall, instead we're going to progreso and cozumel, mexico, and georgetown, grand cayman. the stops in cozumel and grand cayman were originally planned, but now we're arriving on different days.

anyways, we finally get on board and go eat lunch. food was great, dessert was great, and the view was a window seat outside near the pool. overall, first impressions were wonderful.

after lunch we start acquainting ourselves with the lay of the land. we meander every deck, forward to aft, port to starboard, saying things like, "look at that!", "wow!", and "oh my goodness!" everything on the Carnival Conquest is beautiful. details are amazing, paintings everywhere, light fixtures that look like flowers, glass elevators. there are four pools, one for adults only and one for kids only, though i doubt that kids ever graced their own pool the entire time. there is also a water slide and at least 6 hot tubs.

there's a casino, arcade, piano bar, karaoke bar, dance club, internet cafe, ping pong table (on one of the windiest parts of the ship), basketball court, fitness gym & sauna, spa, main lounge, two dining rooms, and a buffet that hardly stops serving food. on the outsides of the buffet area are five other choices for food ... pizza, hamburgers & hot dogs, chinese, sandwiches, and sushi. oh, and soft-serve ice cream any time you want it. there's a lot of stuff, so i'm sure i missed mentioning something.

after getting lost and feeling overwhelmed, we went to check out our room. inside cabin on the seventh deck. great location, centrally located length-wise and width-wise. of course our room is so small it only takes 2 minutes to check it all out, but we met Ganna in the process, our lovely stewardess from Ukraine.

finally the lifeboat drill ... just a matter of putting on your lifejacket, going to your muster station, and waiting it out. after about 15 minutes it was over and time to hit the pool!

found us a couple of lounge chairs and started my attempt to finish four books in 7 days (very ambitious, i know, but really i only had hopes of finishing one). eventually it was time for dinner.

our table was on the lower level of the Renoir room, against the windows with seating for 8. when we arrived another couple was sitting down whom we met quickly, but didn't catch their names. shortly after another couple arrived. at that point we found out the one couple was from Guadelajara, the other from Venezuala. the wives only speak spanish, so for the next two+ hours they spoke to each other in spanish, while me and my friend tried to make out some of the words and talked to each other. the other two seats remained empty for the next several days. eventually another couple showed up for one meal out of the entire week. and after the first night Venezuala changed their seating to a table for two. so that left us and Guadelajara to be mostly silent, that is WHEN they showed up. i'm fairly certain Carnival could have done better putting two single women with some more compatible table mates, but whatever.

after dinner was the first show of the cruise. the welcome portion and then the regular portion including a comedian who was so-so. he got a few laughs out of us, but was certainly not as entertaining as we would have liked.

after the show we meandered into the casino where i promptly lost $22 between penny slots and roulette. i then went to Henri's Disco and danced for the next couple of hours with a guy named Stacy from Oklahoma. i eventually went to bed at about 3:30 a.m., in my own stateroom, thank you very much. :-)

day 2: woke up late, had brunch, layed in the sun on the lido deck for the majority of the day. between eating, reading, working on my tan with appropriate sunscreen on, and going down the slide choking on salt water, it was quite a relaxing, very vacation-like day.

that night's dinner was the first formal night. got dressed up and went to dinner to find no table mates. the show afterward was a great male singer who sang songs as a tribute to motown, R&B, and soul. he was excellent and did well involving the audience.

day 3: Progreso, Mexico. first day in port. a complete waste as far as i'm concerned. as soon as we got off the ship we were being begged to buy stuff and it never ended as long as we were there. we made our way to the beach to see what the water was like, but it was pretty murky. drank a pina colada under a little hut thing and said "no" to everyone who tried to sell us something. i tell ya, i probably said, "no, gracias" over 100 times that day. ugh! we hung out at the beach for a little while, then packed up and went back to the ship. by the way, here in Progreso the ship can dock at the pier, but the pier is 6 miles long once off the ship you have to get on a free shuttle bus that takes you to town. and if you're interested in ruins, apparently you can get on a bus and ride for 2.5 hours to a town that starts with an M, see the pyramids of Mexico for an hour, then get back on the bus and ride back to the pier.

once on the ship we got dressed for dinner and went to the show before our dinner. this show was called Formidable, a french Las Vegas-style dance show. it was good as far as the performance, but not really our choice of entertainment. nonetheless, we watched and then went to dinner. Guadelajara showed up, so we said a few sentences to each other and proceeded to eat dinner in mostly silence. food was great again.

day 4: Cozumel, Mexico. the pier was ruined during Hurricane Ivan, so now the ship has to anchor out and use a tender to get us all to town. a very disorganized mess. we oroginally had tickets to swim with the dolphins, but that was supposed to be on Friday. because of the itinerary change we arrived on Wednesday. so we assumed we wouldn't get to swim with the dolphins, so we took our time getting off the ship, planned to go to Chankanaab Park and snorkel all day. once we finally got to Chankanaab, it was 11 a.m. and they announced they could, in fact, fit us in at noon to swim with the dolphins (you gotta see the pictures for this. it was amazing! they pushed on our feet and we flew in the air. we held on to both of their dorsal fins and they pulled us back to the dock. we kissed. it was amazing!) so for an hour we felt the sand and water, then spent 2.5 hours with the dolphin swim stuff. by the time all that was over with, it was time to go back to the ship. the line for the tender was LOOOONG. an even MORE disorganized mess to get back on. finally, we get on a tender and back on the ship.

dinner tonight was accompanied by the one couple that decided to come to dinner this one and only night, plus Guadelajara. this new couple was from Texas and were newlyweds. after one meal we were pretty happy it was the only night they decided to show up.

the show this night was the Diva of Deception. they flew this woman in all the way from Las Vegas to perform for us. what a complete waste! she was terrible and didn't deceive us at all! word to the wise, if you're ever in Vegas, do not pay to see her. you will be highly disappointed. she basically would be in the middle of an act and turn the lights out! anyone can do magic if you turn the lights out!

day 5: Georgetown, Grand Cayman. now THIS is a place i'd like to spend some time in. i would have especially liked to hang out on Seven Mile Beach. but, we'd already planned to go on an island tour, which because of our itinerary change the tour time changed to 11 a.m. and the tour lasted over 3 hours. so by the time we had free time, it was time to do a tad bit of shopping and get back on the ship. however, we went to the Tortuga Rum factory and sampled as much rum and rum cake as we wanted. all kinds of flavors. then we went to Seven Mile beach and put our feet in the water. then to Hell, a very rocky place that some guy fell on a long time ago and said, "oh hell", hence the name. and then to the turtle farm and got to see a lot of turtles growing up and waiting to be released in October. even got to pick up one or two!

dinner tonight was our second formal night. again, no tablemates. the show was another dance show and since we didn't really enjoy the first one we didn't go to the second one. yes, it was a different theme, but still didn't have interest.

day 6: at sea ... ok, you should know, on tuesday my throat started hurting, by wednesday it was very hard to swallow. but thursday it eased up so i thought it was getting better. well, friday i wake up late and my stomach hurts and my throat still hurts a little. so all day today i suffer from a stomach ache. basically every time i stood up my stomach would hurt. so i stayed in bed until noon, then finally got up and dressed and went down to have some lunch. as i ate it got worse. and by this time i'd had enough sun, so i stayed inside all day long, reading and playing cards.

as the day progressed, nothing got better. we checked out the menu for dinner and nothing looked good, so we ate dinner early on the Lido deck and played cards until it was time for the show. tonights show was a ventriloquist. VERY GOOD. don't remember his name right now, but he was really good. VERY funny and just what i needed to end my icky day with.

day 7: at sea again. today i wake up and feel better, but not wonderful. we played bingo, sat through the debarkation talk, ate lunch, hung out at the pool and read some more, at dinner, played more bingo, went to the show, and packed up all our stuff. bingo is expensive. dinner was without tablemates again. the show was the talent show and really good. they looked all week long for people who could sing like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Garth Brooks, etc. and these people really did great for being just passengers on a cruise. very worth seeing.

day 8: cruise is over, we're in Galveston, time to get off the ship and go home. carry our own luggage down and wait for our deck to be called. we were on our way off the ship around 8 a.m. by the time we get through customs and out to my parents' waiting in my car it was about 9 a.m. if you're able to and don't want to wait around for your color bag tags to be called, doing the self-assist is definitely the way to go.

a few more things and i'll be done...

Sila, Gulnara, and Ganna were GREAT. Sila and Gulnara really made dinners fun and worth wanting to go to. Ganna cleaned our room and made great towel animals and was very pleasant to chat with in the hallway. i wanted to sit all three of them down and just talk to them over lunch.

a cruise is not a way to see the places you port at. a cruise really is about being on the ship and having everything taken care of. however, it's nice to see a few different places and learn which places you'd like to go back to for more time.

bingo really is expensive except for the first game and the second to the last game. the first game is bargain bingo. $5 for a single card, $10 for a triple. they play one game and then the show for that night. on the last day they played 3 or 4 games, one of which was for the free cruise, one game win or lose, $10 for a single card, $20 for a triple card. the second to the last game was 10 game bingo, use the same cards for all 10 games, $10 single, $20 triple. those three games really are the only ones worth playing. all the other ones were just a complete waste of $20 because it was only one game. my point: cruise lines can EASILY charge less and still make tons of money. i was frustrated about that, but played anyway.

take cards or dominos or something. there's always time to hang out on the Lido deck and play with your friends/family for free.

take books, especially if you don't like to play games or go out at night.

don't assume the shows will be the best ever. just remember you didn't pay over a 100 bucks a ticket for a broadway show or Blue Man Group in Vegas. it's really just about providing semi-professional entertainment along with everything else included in your booking price.

ok, i'm done. all in all, a very nice vacation. i am thrilled to say i've been on a cruise and look forward to my next one. feel free to check out my pictures and make as many comments as you want.