This cruise was on the Carnival Magic, leaving from Galveston September 22nd and returning the 29th, spending two days and change at sea, going to Montego Bay in Jamaica, George Town in Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico, and spending one day and change getting back to Galveston.
We drove down to Galveston on Saturday the 21st and had dinner at Gaido's, a seafood restaurant that's over 100 years old. We had grilled scallops and grilled salmon, and it was unbelievably good. If we go back to Galveston, this is definitely where we'll be eating.
The next morning we walked around a little on the beach and into a seaside store to look around, then headed up to start the check in and boarding process a little after noon. The process was slow but easy, kind of like airport security but without pat downs or nudity machines. That afternoon, we spent some time walking around to get a handle on the layout of the ship, looking around the shops, and had a beer in the pub. Later, we went to our seated dinner in the restaurant where we had assigned seating with the two other couples seated at our table.
We had very little in common with the other couples, they'd both known each other and been married a significantly longer time than we had, they both had kids (not with them), and they were mostly interested in getting drunk. They talked a lot about their supportive and close by families, and their churches. We're pretty culturally and politically aware, and were very interested in what's really going on in the countries we were visiting, but any time we tried to bring up things we'd learned during the day, we got blank stares. I used the word "equidistant" and one of the guys replied, "Well, I failed geography, so..." They were very nice people, and I'm sure on their own turf, they do well, it was just a very awkward place for us to be seated and made conversation difficult. Quality of the food as opposed to the other dinner options more than made up for it, so we continued to go back more nights than not.
That night, we did a lot of watching the tv channel with the map showing our location, our heading and speed, our latitude/longitude, and the windspeed and direction. Wind speeds got up to 75km/hr, and there was thunder and lighting outside, we heard several big waves hitting the boat making a big echoing noise periodically through the night so neither of us slept very well. I didn't anticipate being seasick at all, but I had a dizziness that felt like an alcohol buzz so I took the once daily Dramamine and was much, much better off. I kept taking these for the remainder of the week, just in case.
The next morning, we got room service for breakfast, and headed up to the Ocean Plaza for something called Super Trivia, part 1. It turned out to be general trivia with categories, the teams were men against women, and I volunteered to be team captain for the women. There was a big foam die that you tossed once to choose the category, and a second time for the score for that question. If you hit five on the score, you kept tossing until you got a number that wasn't five. Both sides did pretty well, but the women were up at the end by ten points. We had to go back for Super Trivia each day at sea.
Karaoke was next, he sang Rocket Man and I sang Faithfully, and people were still stopping both of us by the end of the cruise telling us we did a great job singing. This was our first experience with the KJ, Jay. He was hilarious, likely Korean, walked like he was wearing a girdle everywhere he went, and compared everyone's voice to someone famous in a way that made no sense. To me, he said, "I love the green streaks, very Nicki Minaj." and then "Wow, she can hit high notes like Celine Dion" after I finished singing. Others were "voice as strong as Christina Aguilera" and the like. Every time someone sang a country song (probably 90% of the population of the boat was from Texas, so this was every couple of songs), he said "yee haw" but the vowels sounded like "ni hao".
Monday night was steakhouse night, we had reservations at the fancypants steakhouse at the rear of the ship, and it was the best food, ever. We had surf and turf and a New York strip, the appetizers and dessert were amazing, and it was all unbelievably delicious. After this, we went back to the room and watched the ocean from our balcony until bedtime.
It was "cruise elegant" night, so everyone was in some form of fancy clothes, from some stuff that could be considered business casual to tuxes and prom dresses. We met the captain, Stefano, and got our picture with him.
Tuesday, another day at sea, we had room service breakfast on the balcony again, just looking out over the gorgeous water as far as the eye can see. We passed a few container ships during the day. We played some Name That Song: Cartoon themes, round two of Super Trivia and the men finished two points up. Husband went on the water slides for a while, I laid out in the adult-only Serenity area on a big round lounge chairs I was lusting after on the web before we left and read for a couple of hours. We mostly laid around this day, played $10 each in the casino slot machines. Husband played his most favorite slot machine ever, called Kitty Glitter.
The buffet was for dinner, and played pub quiz with the team name Pig People.
No comments:
Post a Comment