I mentioned before that we went on a cruise last week, and some of you actually want to hear about it. So I thought I’d share some pictures and highlights, although BRACE YOURSELVES: We are the most boring cruisers ever. Seriously.
Beforehand, I was unreasonably nervous that they wouldn’t let us on the boat, since G didn’t have a passport and we were traveling with his birth certificate instead. Even though I checked approximately 935 times to make sure that traveling with a birth certificate was okay.
Turns out, the lack of passport was not a problem. What was a problem was this:
Customs agent: “Sir, do you have a knife in your backpack?”
G: “No, do you mean the corkscrew?”
Customs agent: “No, it looks like a knife.”
G: “Well I don’t have a knife.”
Customs agent: [Sends us to be searched. We pull out the corkscrew and are very helpful.]
G: “Are you sure you don’t mean the corkscrew?”
Customs agent: “No, I mean these.” [Pulls out giant pair of hedge clippers.]
G: “Oh, I forgot I had those in there.”
Yeah, those got confiscated.
We also lost our corkscrew and had to get the cabin steward to come open our bottle of wine. Oh the humanity!
Ahem.
We participated in one, yes, one organized shipboard activity. It was a stand-up comic, and let’s just say, it became real obvious real fast why he was performing on a cruise ship during hurricane season. Yeah.
Speaking of hurricane season, it rained some (the day we left was all sorts of dreary), but not a ton.
Never fear, even in the case of torrential downpour, kids would STILL be in the pool. On a related note, we never went in the pool, and we’re not sorry.
After the horrible comic, we decided that what we would rather do is just relax and read and eat a lot. So that’s what we did the large majority of the time. I even wrote some blog posts.
These drinks were super-delicious. Too bad I have absolutely no idea what was in them.
My souvenir glass seems pretty darn confident.
The boat wasn’t deserted. It was just so windy, most people weren’t crazy enough to try to read at the back of the ship. NOT ME.
PSA: Neither of us got seasick. G didn’t even have to break out his seabands. And as a point of reference, back when G used to take the bus to work, he had to wear his seabands every day for a 30 minute bus ride. So. There’s that.
We stopped for a day in Cozumel, which was really just a morning because all we wanted to do is shop and eat Mexican food. Which doesn’t take a whole day. We were back on the ship watching The Hunger Games by 12:30.
Mango Margarita. Yes. Let’s just all ignore the fact that I look insane.
These guys were performing during lunch. It added to the tropical ambiance of it all and even made the guacamole taste better.
(Just kidding. There is no way to make guacamole taste better, because it is perfection already).
The only problem was, DID YOU SEE THAT GUY’S FACE?
It’s like he is staring into my soul, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
He was like that the whole time.
Anyway.
We may or may not have watched parts of The Hunger Games three times, and the entire movie once, while we were on the ship. They were just playing it around the clock on the ship’s movie channel. We couldn’t resist.
Also, we ate a lot, because when all the food is included and you really love food more than you should but you can’t help it, you eat a lot. And thus I have many food pictures. But I won’t post them, because honestly, unless you were the one eating the food, cruise ship food pictures are kinda boring.
Okay, here’s one. G really wanted me to use this picture for the blog, and I’m not sure why, but I’m a good wife and so I’ll use it.
“I want you to see my pizza and the view at the same time!”
Okay, honey. Okay.
Speaking of food, on our cruise, we had the option of an assigned dining time, where we would be eating with the same group of people every night at the same table at the same time, or flexible dining, where we’d eat by ourselves during a certain window of time. We opted for flexible, because we’re antisocial and didn’t want to have to meet people (don’t judge). But even with the flexible dining, while you’re not at the same table as strangers, you’re still sitting really close to them.
So although we didn’t want to actually interact with other people, we decided to play the game of “try to make the people at the table next to us laugh because we are so hilarious, which is awkward for them and amusing for us because they’re trying to pretend they’re not listening to our conversation.” It was a fun game. Especially when I made the guy next to me choke.
Me, laughing at the guy next to me, laughing at me. I’m too hilarious to handle.
G, pretending he doesn’t know me. Like we’re not sharing the same tiny table.
Hey, I told you not to judge.
Moving on!
We discovered mini golf on the upper deck of the boat, and G has a deep and profound love for mini golf, so we played 3 times. I won twice, and he won once. The time he won was when it was freakishly windy, and he still tied my best score. Apparently G thrives on wind in mini golf. It’s his mutant power.
And, um…that’s really pretty much all we did. There’s not a lot to report when you spend about 80% of every day sitting on the deck reading, munching, and writing. If you want to read about all the fun and exciting cruise activities, you should probably go check out a travel blog, which I’m guessing is a lot more action packed when it comes to travel activities than a book blog. Or at least my book blog.
We did make sure to take some “look, we’re on a cruise without our kids” pictures though!
I’m taking “windblown” to a whole new level.
I was dumb and started the day in pants. That lasted for a whopping 30 minutes.
Waiting for the safety demonstration. SO EXCITED TO BE SAFE.
In case of emergency, one of THESE BOATS would save us. And they are completely UNSINKABLE, even if they’re full of water. At least, that’s what they told us in the safety demonstration. I wanted to see this in action, but I guess that would have involved the boat sinking, so it’s okay that I didn’t get to.
So there you have it! And much as we sound like the most boring cruisers in the history of the world (or at least since cruising became a thing that people do for fun and not to discover brave new worlds), we had a really good time.
Except for when our rental car overheated on the way back home and added 5 hours to our drive. But we’re going to pretend that didn’t happen. And it wouldn’t have happened if we would have just stayed on the boat forever.
Lesson learned.
P.S. We never got the hedge clippers back.
Books read:
Whispers in Autumn by Trisha Leigh
Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard
Circus Summer by Kailin Gow
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede
[Husband re-read Fellowship of the Ring and listened to some audio book about the Trojan War. Our tastes are slightly different]
Movies watched:
The Hunger Games
This Means War
The Vow
Dystopian before dystopian was a thing. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about this book that I liked. Just that I really, really liked it.
