The House is Still Standing

We did it. The Eagle & I went away for 6 days and came home to everything as it should be. Hopefully Nana will have time to recover before Christmas!

I have several post ideas that I jotted down while we were at sea, and I will be posting them over the next few days so be sure to scroll down because the new post may not be at the top.

The Longest Hour

Admission: I like to have a schedule.

I do not do well when I don't have a plan, so for the day at sea I was looking forward to lots of shipboard activities to keep me busy. I was a tad bit disappointed that there weren't a few more things scheduled, but I did enjoy the towel folding class (Carnival is big into towel origami) and Christmas kids' show (a *momentary* twinge of sadness that our kids weren't there). However, I had a hard time getting into sitting in a lounge chair and reading a magazine. Crazy, I know. I am just so used to "doing" that it was hard to have "nothing" to do. I lasted less than an hour before deciding to go on the waterslide.

Eeyore & Rabbit

We had a great table assignment in the dining room for dinner. We enjoyed the company of the other couples from the first night, but it wasn't until the final day at sea that we fully understood how lucky we were.

That day we decided to eat in the main dining hall for lunch, because we preferred the food. Unfortunately that subjected us to the random will of the waitresses, who seated us with a grumpy retired couple who seemed to be able to complain about everything from raking leaves to bamboo towels. They could even complain about two separate things at the same time. When we finally escaped, Mike said "Wasn't that like eating with Eeyore?" I had to agree. And how fitting that Eeyore married Rabbit. If everyone is happy on a cruise, then I can't imagine these two at home.

We are the Champions

There is nothing I like better than a little competition, so it probably isn't that much of surprise that we decided to do the "Amazing Cozumel Race" as an excursion.

We had a blast running all over Cozumel following maps and figuring out clues, just like they do on the TV show "The Amazing Race". We got to go to the museum, find statues & landmarks, figure out secret codes and the Eagle even got to snorkel in some to the clearest ocean around. We had a great time running all around town --- and we finished in an amazing 1 hour and 33 minutes, a half hour faster than the next fastest team.

We even stopped for a some pictures (although that was a bit of a conflict of interest)...




For more info on the Amazing Cozumel Race, check out their website. We definitely recommend it.

The Big 3

That was the name of our excursion on Key West. We boarded a boat first thing in the morning for adventures in kayaking and snorkeling and a little dolphin watching mixed in. We started the morning hunting for the dolphins, but they were no where to be found, so it was off to kayak in the mangroves but not before seeing a cool rainbow.


The kayaking and snorkeling pictures are on an underwater camera, but overall I think both went really well considering I had never done them before. While kayaking we saw a baby bowhead shark, a horseshoe crab, green & white heron, water snakes and lots of little fish. I also managed to snorkel this time - I failed miserably on our honeymoon - and saw lots of coral & fish, including a clown fish. After everyone was back on board, we were able to see a bottlenose dolphin on our way back to the docks.


After a little shopping in town, our stop at Key West was over. I think it was quite a success!

Shoes 1, Feet 0

They were almost too perfect. Shoes that seemed to fit the casual & summer nature of the trip, and would also double for the formal night were obviously too good to be true. After about a block of walking in South Beach my feet were killing me. After walking to CVS for band-aids, I had blisters. Ugh. I hate when shoes turn out to have little razor blades in them.

It Stinks

Sometimes you just wish you could turn off your sense of smell. The first leg of our journey to Florida for our anniversary getaway got us off to a smelly start. From the woman on the plane with too much perfume to the lady behind me who had to be told this by the flight attendant, "Ma'am, you can't use nail polish on the airplane."

As if that wasn't bad enough, we were lucky enough to sit next to a woman on the bus from the airport who smelled like urine. Yuck. And of course that reminded me that a whole bunch of stinky people just like her had probably been sitting in my seat before me. Yuck again.

But smells aside, we were thrilled to arrive in South Beach.