Cruise Pix

Boarding

This was my first cruise so you’ll pardon me if I go over some stuff ignore you experienced cruisers know all about. To begin with, Carnival had a hard time getting the passengers off from the previous cruise so that we could get on. It seems that customs was a little more thorough because the ship it just returned from Cuba. This led to the waiting area becoming overfilled with a lot more passengers being stuck outside. But the professionals that they are, were able to get it taken care of and get us on board with only about an hour’s delay on departure.

Key West

Our first port of call was Key West. As you may recall, they had quite a little blow down there not that long ago. Fortunately Key West you only got the edge of the I am not the heart of the storm. The only real result of the storm that we could see was there were an awful lot of sailboats upon the rocks. Mike and Sue and Judy scheduled a paragliding adventure while uncle now and I wandered around enjoying the sights. It really was a beautiful day to wander around Key West. If you should ever happen to get down there, if you do nothing else, I would strongly suggest that you take a look at Mel’s Museum documenting the finding of the Atocha.

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On-board Entertainment

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Dining

Dining was served under several different venues. For breakfast and lunch they had a cafeteria style of serving with multiple choices of food styles are types. Everything from basic eggs to full-blown sit down breakfast to Mongolian grill type lunches, with full dessert bars and even pizza just to mention a few. Those in the know (Mike Sue and Marion,) there was cooked to order full service breakfast available in the sit down restaurant area. Dinners were served with full service and a very varied menu. More than a few of us took advantage of the double servings of shrimp cocktail. The shrimp were perfect food was great and the price was right.

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Cozumel

When we got to Cozumel, the group split to the four winds with some going to the ruins, others going snorkeling and poor Ralph’s sailing adventure test canceled due to lack of participants. A group of us wandered around the dock area doing a little shopping and checking the area out. Marion spent a little time checking out the diamond market. We all went back to the ship for lunch and agreed to me afterwards and go down to Senior Frogs for the libation. Sue, who spent the morning and part of the afternoon snorkeling didn’t get to Senor frogs till after we had already had a good start. As you may have noticed she took catching up seriously. While there, the balloon guy came around and we all got balloon hats which we wore for a picture a little later in the evening on board ship.

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Miscellaneous

These are just pictures of various members of the group having a good time. Of particular note though, was the fact that Greg Stevens decided that this was a particularly good time to ask Billy Gable to be his wife. When she accepted, he produced a very nice engagement ring. The first night of the dining Kathie Lee (Kathy number one) told us about how she used to go around to different bars, when she was in college, claiming it was her birthday to get free drinks. From that point, somehow it got to be a kind of a joke about how she would announced regularly, that it was not her birthday. When we were in Cancun, next to decided to go out and find an “it’s not my birthday card”. At dinner that night, the group sang “happy its not your birthday” to her, while Sue gave her the card.