Travelogue #1: the boat

Well, my apologies for the next few posts. It's snowing outside and I miss the sun. So I'm going to drag you through my vacation. I figure, for the amount of money we just blew on this thing, I should get to publish as many pictures as I want. So click away from here if you don't want to see more than you ever saw of me before (yes, we're talking swimsuit pictures). I'll never know you didn't stick around. And don't mind me if I munch on chocolate mints while I post these. I have a few leftover from our pillow tops each night.

So I thought I'd start out by describing life on the boat.

This was no dinky rowboat. It was easily the biggest ship I have ever seen. When we left the ship to go on our shore excursions, I would check out other people's ships, kind of like checking out other people's dates at prom, and I always felt proud that ours was the biggest and fanciest of all of them.

This was our fourth cruise. Always I have enjoyed the days at sea as much as I enjoy the days on shore. I love just hanging out and enjoying life aboard. There is so much to do! This ship had three different swimming pools. Our favorite was in the "Solarium." Here's what it looked like.

The water was cold seawater, so I mostly stayed in a deck chair reading (see a later post for all my book reports), but I enjoyed the hot tubs at night.

Of course, eating was a big part of the vacation. Every meal was huge. I would tell myself I was going to stick to granola for breakfast, and then walk by the buffet and see blueberry pancakes, omelettes, french toast with strawberries on top, etc., and my resolve would weaken. By the last four nights or so, I skipped the entrees completely because I just couldn't eat any more. Their caesar salad was incredible, so I could call it dinner and feel OK about eating dessert. By the time you leave the cruise, you are pretty good friends with your table mates and your waiters. Here is our waitstaff, Idris and Vicky. The people we sat with just happened to include a couple who live in South Carolina (where Roger served his mission) who are LDS. It was fun to hit it off with them immediately.

Sometimes the meals were "casual" and sometimes they were formal. Here we are ready for a formal night.

If you look close, you can see that Roger is wearing some medals around his neck. He won three of them onboard, two for ping-pong and one for rock-climbing. The rock-climbing made him somewhat of a celebrity on the cruise. We had people stopping us all the time and mentioning it: "You're the guy who scaled the wall so fast, right?" He was very proud. I was proud of him, too. (Think about it--there are not many sports you can excell in when you are six feet tall and weigh nothing. Those long arms are perfect for this sport.)


Here he is all proud after winning.

While he was busy climbing, I was doing other things . . .


. . . like bellydancing.

And playing a little ping pong myself.

And figuring out how to wear my new scarf.

And watching what was going on out at sea.

We enjoyed the evening entertainment each night and the movie theater on-board. My favorite thing, though, was retiring to our cabin for naps in the afternoon and for bed at night. There were always mints on our pillows and some towel-sculptures from our cabin steward. Here's our favorite, a monkey that we found hanging from our light fixture.

This time we saw and did some amazing things on our shore excursions, but life on the boat is still my favorite part of cruises.

Next post: beach time.

P.S. Please let me know whether the videos work. They work for me when I preview the blog, but when I just access it they don't work. I just get a little red x in the corner. Why is that?