Anniversary cruise - Day 2

Embarkation day! Today we boarded the Norwegian Jewel, our third time on NCL. Also with us are Michelline's parents. We gave her mom a cruise for her 50th birthday last year, but this is the first time we could get it scheduled. Random stuff from today -

- After getting to the cruise terminal and boarding the ship, Pete, Michelline's stepfather, realized he didn't have his credit card. We decided to check the truck. This meant going upstream and getting off the ship. If you haven't been on a cruise before, the security is similar to an airport, but not quite so tight. And when the ship is boarding, everything is designed to get people onto the ship, not off. So we're crossing under ropes, cutting around barriers and we get to an unmarked, unmanned door leading out to the baggage area. We exit and are almost to the parking lot when a guy stops us and says we're not allowed to be there. He says we have to go back through the building. So we go back to the unmarked door which now, of course, is manned and locked. Fortunately, we were able to scoot past the security guard while he was confused. It turned out that Pete did, in fact, leave his card in the truck so all was well. On the way back in, we saw the baggage area guy. He said that we could have been arrested for being in that area. Maybe he was exaggerating, but what a shitty day that would have been.

- Norwegian does what they call freestyle cruising. This means that instead of having a set time and assigned table for dinner, which is customary, you just go when you want. We don't really like this - it's fun to go to dinner with the same people every night and have the same waiters. But this ship is designed for freestyle, so they have 10 specialty restaurants. Tonight we ate in their teppanyaki room. The food was good, but probably not worth the $20 cover. Tomorrow we're trying the Italian place, which has no cover.

- Guinness Stout is good beer, even at $4.50 a bottle. I got 6 for the price of 5 and I have 3 left. One of the problems with cruising is you want to eat like a pig, but you also want to get heavily buzzed (or wasted). You really have to work a schedule if you want to do both without getting sick. I had a liquid lunch which left me pleasantly glowing until dinner. I think I may go see what kind of buzz I can work up now that dinner has settled.

- Unless Michelline's downstairs winning right now, we're down $160 in the casino. If we win any big jackpots (like my $700 slot win 2 years ago), I'll be sure to let everyone know.

- Looks like it was a bad day for all the couch regulars except for nightshift. How do the Redskins and the Eagles beat the Cowboys and the Giants on the same day? And why is the station that just finished showing the Redskins-Giants showing Sportscenter from the UK? Anyone want the score of the Liverpool-Man United game?


- We have a balcony for the first time in our 8 cruises. So I'm wondering what kind of interesting stuff we can do out there without getting kicked off the ship :).

Anniversary Cruise - Day 1

We started off on our third vacation in the last 3 weeks today, this one being a cruise commemorating our 15th wedding anniversary, which is coming up on December 19. We're leaving tomorrow on the Norwegian Jewel for a 5-night cruise to Cozumel, where we've been twice before, and Grand Cayman, where we've never been. We decided to drive down to Miami today rather than getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. That way we get to start our vacation a day earlier, we don't have to rush, and we have a cushion just in case anything happens (flat tire, locking your keys in the car and waiting 2 hours for a fucking locksmith as the ship is filling up, no of course I've never done that). Some random things from day 1.

- Last year we finally got tired of the sluggishness and grainy quality of the pictures our Pentax Optio was taking, so we bought our first SLR, the Nikon D40. Now this is a great camera and it takes great pictures. In fact, many of you know that we had our original stolen in London this year and bought a second one as soon as we got back. The one drawback is the size. It's not the kind of camera you can strap on and forget about. We decided we needed a pocket-sized camera to get the shots when we didn't want to lug the Nikon around. After much research we decided on the Sony Cybershot DSCW55. Out of all the sub-$200 cameras we researched, this one got universally great reviews for features, price and picture quality. We went to Circuit City to get it and found this, the DSCW80 as an open-box special for $119 instead of the normal $199! The picture above was taken with our new camera.

- We went to the Bayside Marketplace to do a little shopping and eat dinner. It's in a great location, smack in the middle of Downtown Miami, on the bay, next to the Arena where the Heat play and in front of the Port of Miami. So we're looking for a place to park, it's $20 to park in the damn garage!, This is just for the privilege of shopping in the fine stores of Bayside, such as Brookstone, Claire's and FYE, among others. After aborting the approach to the garage with sticker shock, we find a sign pointing to self-metered parking. We get down there and find a spot and it's a $10 flat rate. It's pretty bad when you feel like $10 is a bargain to park at what's basically a mall.

- Driving in downtown Miami sucks. Leaving Bayside, I head back west toward 95, as we're the next exit north. I find the onramp, and see our exit is next, a left-exit, all the way across the road, blocked by a fucking cement median. So I head north and look for an exit where I can turn around. I get off on 112 West, which goes to the airport. This is good because our hotel is next to the airport. Well, it's not so good because you can't get back on 95 South from this goddamn exit. So we head west all the way down some scary-looking streets to 57 ave, only to find that the entire fucking airport lies between us and our hotel, and there's no going through. We head back east, and get back to the original 95N exit we started from. At this point tempers are flaring and I head West again, this time farther south of the airport. Finally, we get to our hotel, about 90 minutes after leaving Bayside. This should have been a 15-minute trip. And the shitty thing was, we knew exactly where we were in relation to the hotel the entire time, but the fucked-up streets in Miami wouldn't take us where we needed to go. And let's not even get started on the damn toll-roads that they spring on you just before the toll plaza.

- Overall, outside of a tense few minutes, we've had a very nice day. We'll be getting to the port tomorrow at around 11, and we should be setting sail about 4.