Seven Days in Seven Paragraphs

Day One - Embarkation
After the emergency drill, we staked out prime spots on the very front of Deck 10 to watch the horizon move closer and drink our first tropical beverages - a daiquiri/colada swirl for me and a mojito for Scott. We even saw a manatee before we left Port Canaveral. We watched the lame "Welcome Aboard" show, and then got ready for dinner at Lumiere's. Our server team was on the ball, and we were at a table with a retired couple from Alabama (so Scott's accent came back) and a couple from Michigan. The food, as always, was delicious.

Day Two - At Sea
We managed to not sleep all morning and made it to the pool around 11 am, all lathered with sunscreen and toting reading materials and more sunscreen. This ended up being the only day we spent at the pool, since there was so much other stuff going on and because the chairs were all taken by 11 am the next day! We got a call from Palo that they had an available table for dinner that night, and we jumped at the chance to go back for more seafood risotto. This was also formal night, which worked out well for Scott - only one night in a jacket! That night's show was the Golden Mickey's. Since we had seen it on the past two cruises, we skipped seeing it.

Day Three - At Sea

Today started with our character breakfast. I love character breakfasts! We also went to a "class" today - Mixology and Fruit Carving. This was Scott's idea, for the alcohol part ("we should learn to do something with the bottles on the top of the fridge") and I tagged along for the fruit carving. So yes, we learned how to make a couple tropical drinks. The fruit carving was only a demonstration (probably better for me, since I enjoy life with ten fingers!), but WOW! I think that carved fruit is neat, but seeing it made right in front of me made me really appreciate it. It's certainly not the same as carving a jack-o-lantern for Halloween! The evening show was Twice Charmed, which was a post script to Cinderella. I LOVED it! It's my new favorite DCL show. Dinner was at Parrot Cay, and was my least favorite meal of the cruise, but the desserts made up for it. I also got to watch Cinderella 3 on the big outdoor screen while Scott read one of his James Bond books.

Day Four - St. Maarten

Our first port! Our snorkel excursion started with a bus ride to the French side of the island (St. Martin) and then a boat ride over to Pinel Island. The weather was a little wet and the waves were pretty choppy. We did see some interesting sites snorkeling, but I haven't gotten those pictures back yet. Once we exhausted ourselves in the water, we went over to the beach and chilled until it was time to take the boat/bus back to the Dutch side (St. Maarten). The island seemed way too much like Nassau for me - tourism-driven economy and all. Scott got a pretty wicked sunburn on his back - my fault I guess - and had to snorkel the next day in a t-shirt to prevent it getting worse. Who knew the sunburn wouldn't be the worst part of that day? This was the night of the Pirates deck party and midnight buffet, but we skipped it to prepare for the next morning.

Day Five - St. Thomas/St. John

St. Thomas is a U.S. port, and required a visit to Customs at 6:15. Scott woke up with a massive head cold/ear ache/sore throat and I dragged him from Customs to breakfast to our shore excursion. We also had to tender at St. Thomas (take a little boat from the big boat to the shore). Tendering sucks! It's scary for someone afraid of heights, and it's slow. On the way out, we actually got straight from the ship onto a ferry over to St. John, which wasn't quite as bad as the tender back onto the ship. The part of St. John that we were on is part of the U.S. National Park Service. Of course, this means there were no tacky tourist shops - only tacky open-air taxis. The snorkeling at St. John was the highlight of the trip for me. The surf was pretty rough, but the coral there is abundant, along with the sea urchins and a whole bunch of fish I couldn't identify. Back on board, we relaxed for the rest of the day. I went and saw Wild Hogs in the movie theater while Scott slept. And we lucked out and were by ourselves at dinner. Our table mates were nice enough, but it always feels awkward to fill an entire dinner conversation with smalltalk and was good to just talk to each other.

Day Six - Back at Sea

Scott was pretty much dead to the world today. I took the opportunity to do some stuff that he otherwise would have dreaded. I started the day with the behind-the-scenes look at the theater and actually got to stand on the stage and look out into the audience - pretty cool, even if the seats were all empty. And since they allowed photos, I took lots to show Scott what he had missed. I did the galley tour in the afternoon, which Scott was actually disappointed to miss. I took some pictures, but they pretty much showcase the same thing: lots and lots of stainless steel. I also watched two more movies, Bridge to Terabithia and The Guardian. Dinner tonight was the "Captain's Dinner," a.k.a. lobster night. I actually had seared tuna instead and it was everything that my birthday dinner wasn't - moist, tender, and perfectly rare.

Day Seven - Castaway Cay

While sitting out on deck eating breakfast, a server approached us and asked if we'd like to move inside because of the approaching bad weather. We moved inside and weren't even seated when the deluge started. Of course, this is what Scott had been expecting, since we'd never had good weather on our Castaway day. But by the time finished eating, the sky had cleared and we ended up having a fabulous day sitting on lounge chairs under an umbrella. We read and cat napped and eavesdropped on the (loud) conversations around us. The rest of the day rounded out with stupid pictures around the ship, packing, dinner, and the farewell show. The show definitely had its cheesy moments, but I'm enough of a Disney freak that shows like that always make me tear up.

So that's the briefest possibly synopsis of the cruise that I could possibly offer. I could (and still might) do an entire post on our adventures in gluttony. I love cruise food! And tomorrow I'll be picking up my photos (and photo CD) from the waterproof camera and will have to add another post all about our ports of call!

Rather than do yet another "same old" scrapbook, I took an idea I saw on a web board and did a photo scavenger hunt while on board: find something to represent every letter of the alphabet. So I'll be putting the scrapbook for this vacation together alphabetically. We (ok... I) had a lot of fun finding the letters. That's how we ended up with some of my favorite photos, like the one of me in the "A" - Atrium in the previous post. It was also a great boredom buster for those days at sea and a fun creativity exercise. Hopefully the 101 digital photos I sent over to Wal Mart this afternoon will find their way into a book by the time I go back to work. Otherwise I may never finish it!

I leave you with Sunset on Day One, as captured by Scott from our veranda.