Traveling & Cruising

What seems to be every day, I get email from the usual sites informing me of new travel deals. Hotwire, Priceline, and Carnival are the usual suspects, although there may be another or two. Every day I open their email in hope of finding an awesome deal. Every day I open their email to find that the awesome deal isn’t there. Sure, there’s a good deal or two if you’re flying from the “Northwest” but rarely from anywhere else. Almost never is Denver on the list of good origination flights.

I’m always interested in the cruise deals though. I went on a cruise once, several years ago. It was a Carnival cruise to the Caribbean, 7 days, stopped in Cozumel (Mexico), Montego Bay (Jamaica), and Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands). At around the hour-after-getting-on-the-boat mark, I already was looking forward to my next cruse. In fact, I was ready to book it right then and there.

Fast-forward 4+ years to today and I still haven’t been on my second cruise. I’m still waiting, patiently, for the right time and circumstances. (Typing that sentence out made me realize, and think back to another post of mine about living life your way and to its fullest on your own terms… or something like that. Now, with that in mind, I’m sitting here wondering why I haven’t taken another cruise. I better get planning!)

Anyway… We flew from Denver to Houston on New Year’s Eve, stayed overnight (which produced a very interesting story while in the hotel room for the evening), took the Carnival shuttle bus to Galveston the next morning, arrived dockside in dense fog (delaying the arrival of the ship, thus the disembarking of prior passengers, their luggage, and cleaning of the ship), had lunch at a seafood place next to the dock, and waited in line to get on the ship (which was unusual, so we were told, caused by the fog).

Here’s a short list of the highlights from the cruise:
-All-you-can-eat
-All-you-can-drink (although drinks weren’t free on the ship, it cost less than $200 for 2 people to drink from the first hour to the last on the ship, even after 7 days)
-24-hour food
-Animals shaped from towels, left by the maid service from their daily cleaning
-Excursions (we did the Mayan ruin tour in Mexico, boating/snorkeling in Jamaica, and beach day in Grand Cayman)

(Photo courtesy of sun-tasticvacations.com)

I can’t portray the level of enjoyment I had while on that ship. I can only suggest to everyone I meet that they take a cruise at least once in their life. As for me, I had hoped to make it an annual trip… clearly that hasn’t panned out. I’d better get to it!

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