Cruise news

A belated report on our recent cruise of the western Caribbean, taken the second week in February. Sorry for the absence. I believe the long winter froze my motivation. ;)

Goodness, there were so many things that, according to Newton's Law, should have thrown a wrench into our cruise vacation plans. Thankfully, Newton's Law is often in direct conflict with the prevailing will of God. In other words, nothing really went wrong at all. But that doesn't mean I came away empty handed. There's a story in there somewhere. Lesee..........

As you might know, I suffered a very serious migraine attack just days before we were to begin the steps to our vacation. If you've never had a serious one, let me just paint it this way. Someone sneaks up, hits you in the back of your head with a plastic ball bat. It stings. You know you've been hit and have the sting to prove it. While you're trying to get your bearings, they trade out the plastic bat for a sledgehammer and, BAMM!, they strike again. I'm totally serious. A migraine headache doesn't feel like a headache at all. In fact, it feels like a head injury. I was nauseated and wretching. The back of my head felt like the skull had parted and I could not lay down in bed at all. The softness of the pillows felt like a vise pressing down on my skull bones. It was that bad. I went to the ER in desperation. And they provided relief after IV meds and fluids. But before the sun rose the next morning, I was in pain again. For days. Prescribed Darvocet made me wretch all over again with overwhelming nausea. Can you imagine what that does to a sledehammered head? OUCH!!!
A visit to my family doc and a migraine prescription finally brought much needed relief. I hope you are not one who suffers from this excruciating ailment at any time.

And now, the highlights (and near mishaps) of our vacation.
FRIDAY:
The day of the major snowstorm warnings for the entire midwest. Carl got off work at 1:00pm. We left as soon as he got home, as we had a 6 hour drive to Ohio to leave our kids with my parents. It took NINE hours and we counted 42 cars in the ditches, plus one semi-truck jack-knifed on 71S just above Columbus, OH. It blocked all lanes of southbound traffic heading into Columbus. Oh my! Thank goodness we were northbound.
We went to bed around 11pm at my parents', then had to get up at 2:15am to get ourselves on the standby list for our morning flights (check-in time is one way to gain priority for seats when airline employees fly standby.) Naturally, our airline's employee portal was down online, so I had to sit there for fifteen minutes in the middle of the night waiting for the site to come back up. Sigh.

SATURDAY:
We got up at 4:15am (yes, we had just been up at 2:15am) to find a good 5" of snow or more. I was SO afraid we'd get stuck, especially when my dad backed out of the driveway and we heard the deep "crunch" under the wheels. We were in my mom's Tracker and thankfully the four-wheel drive prevailed. It was a tedious drive to the airport. I worried about my dad driving back home, a 17 mile drive, alone. He made it back safely though. Phew! All still well.

We had intended to connect through LaGuardia, as there were the most open seats for standbys there. However, with Philly expecting a FOOT of snow and all (Oy vey!)....good thing we went to Dallas. In fact, LaGuardia closed down (another disaster averted). We knew we'd likely get bumped off a few flights in Dallas, but barring a cancelled Dallas-Miami flight, we figured we'd eventually get out of Dallas and on to Miami. It took three tries, but we finally found ourselves on a flight bound for Miami (and had business class seats too. They fully recline, you have your own screen for viewing movies or playing games, and you're provided a full sized pillow and down comforter. Yeah, it was GOOD!)


We usually make a trip over to Bayside Mall in Miami. It's a funky, artsy outdoor mall with lots of eateries and boutique shopping. Unfortunately, we arrived in Miami too late to do that, so we ate at the airport and then headed over to our hotel. There had been some confusion over our reservation after we booked it (as in the hotel confirmed it, then later couldn't find it). We didn't want a room mishap because there were no rooms (zero, zilch) in all of Miami due to it being Superbowl weekend (yes, we're VERY lucky we got on any flights given that fact.) Thankfully, all was well. We received our room key and a welcome bag filled with snacks, bottled water and coupons. A nice touch from an old, refurbished hotel.

SUNDAY:
Got up early and took a walk outside our hotel. It was just down the street from where we stayed last year, but we didn't realize then that it backed up to a nice neighborhood. We enjoyed our sunny morning walk through the neighborhood, then headed back to the hotel to wait for our ride to the ship. We didn't have to wait long, and by 10:30am, we were on our way. We were one of the first 10 passengers or so on board. Our room wasn't ready, but who cares when you have a ginormous ship to explore? We enjoy looking at the millionaire homes alongside port of Miami, so we spent time doing that, eating lunch, and watching other passengers board before we set sail at 4pm. Woohoo!
MONDAY:
A day at sea. We worked out in the gym, walked almost 3 miles on deck, and enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day out by the pool. There are so many activities to enjoy that I won't list them here, but suffice it to say we had plenty to do (or not) to help us relax as we pleased.


Tuesday:
Today we were on the island of Grand Cayman.


We decided to take a Jeep 4x4 island tour. Whoa, was it ever F-U-N!


Carl was our driver, which suggests we had passengers. Another couple from our ship. Very nice, from Chicago, very TALL. I mention this only because of "the incident." Let me back up though and say that our day began with a trip to a local hotel where we had full use of their facilities; a private spot on Grand Cayman's 7-Mile Beach, lounge chairs, a free drink, restrooms, and free use of their snorkeling equipment.


We enjoyed about 2 hours on the beach before we bussed to pick up our jeeps for island touring. The guides took us to a BEAUTIFUL spot called Morgan's Harbor. It was a rustic, untouched area of coastline. In the photo, you'll see the waves breaking as a solid white line out from shore. That is actually the reef that surrounds 75% of Grand Cayman. From the shore to that point, the water only deepens to 15 feet. Beyond the reef? A FOUR MILE drop in places (I won't tell you how terrifying that is to me.)


The incident. Okay, so. We were heading back through the semi-jungle terrain of Barker national park. As we drove off of the sands of the beach onto the dirt road out, our guide yelled to Carl, "Give it the ol' Caribbean spin!" (think thick Jamaican accent there.) So Carl does what any "big boy with a toy" would do. He floored it. A 180º sand tosser and we quickly got up to about 45mph when he suddenly noted the HUGE potholes in the dirt road.

It was too late to safely avoid them, as we were already into the "put the shocks to the test" phase of hitting the potholes. If he had forced the breaks, we might well have flipped the vehicle. So there was nothing to do but release his foot from the gas and bump and bounce along until the jeep slowed down. And THAT is when it happened.

As we hit several large potholes, a loud "K-bang, k-bang" was heard in the back seats. I assumed it was seat belt buckles, but oh. no. it. was. not. Before I could safely spin around in my seat to see what had happened,.....BAMM! I myself was in the backseat.
Not just me.
All of me.
As in seat and all.
And I landed in the lap of a six foot tall stranger of a man behind me.
"Why, hellooOo there." To my great relief, he was laughing hysterically (and frankly, I thought it might be a sign of head trauma). It seems my jeep seat didn't lock into place well, as I ended up in said stranger's lap TWO MORE times before it was all said and done.

We spent time at the Rum factory (nothin' like giving a bunch of cruisers the keys to your jeeps, then heading on over to the rum factory and offering them free samples of about 15 different rums and rum cakes, eh?)




We also went to Hell.


No, not that Hell.
Hell, Grand Cayman.
It got its name from the unusual rock formation behind the post office (yes, you can send postcards from Hell. Who knew?)

Wednesday:
We arrived on the island of Cozumel. Because we've been there several times already, we opted to take a 45 minute ferry ride to the mainland to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum, a 45 minute bus ride away.


The tour operators were wonderful and provided us with a thorough historical overview before arriving. The grounds were absolutely beautiful and the beach behind them? To die for. It was soooo lovely.


Not as lovely as Crane Beach on the island of Barbados, but still breathtaking. What wasn't so lovely, and in fact was downright frightening was the ferry ride over and back. The water was rough enough to make us somewhat seasick on the ride over to the mainland. Imagine our dismay when we got back from the ruins, only to discover the sea had become even more choppy. I was seriously concerned for our safety heading back to the ship. Hubby wasn't, but he tends to happily roll with the waves punches so you can't go by him.

Thursday:
Another day at sea as we made our way back to Miami. On this day, we saw the best performance we've ever taken in on a ship. It was a dance group from the Jean Ann Ryan Company. This production company turns out Broadway and Vegas quality shows and let me tell you, they were extremely talented and polished. They performed two nights and both were equally fabulous. However, on Thursday night, Hubs told me to look above my head during the show. What did I see? You'll have to go HERE, then click on the picture image to experience it. We sat right up front and I still can't believe that caliber of a performance was included in my cruising cost. Amazing!

Friday:
We got up very early, ate breakfast on the ship, then waited for the announcement that we could deboard. It came early enough that we wanted to try to make a mad dash for the airport to try to catch the first flight out. Otherwise, we anticipated a long day of full flights. Thankfully, we did get there in time to make the flight to Chicago and connected back into Cleveland with no trouble.

THE END (Well, until next year, that is. Getting this down, Sniz and Big Doofus?) ;)

Toni