Showing posts with label cruise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cruise. Show all posts

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Ready to Cruise Again...

 
It took a couple of tries for DH to convince me to go on a cruise. He'd gone on several with his family prior to my first "boat ride." But once I went, I was hooked and eagerly anticipated our second trip.
 
Our first cruise was Royal Caribbean ship from Galveston, the second was a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship out of New Orleans. Both were wonderful.

Our boarding in Galveston was delayed a couple of hours, so DH and I went and visited a couple of Navy boats, the USS Cavalla and the USS Stewart, instead of twiddling our thumbs in the hotel.

Our second cruise departed from New Orleans and as I'd never been there, we went down a couple of days early so I could check out the French Quarter, which I loved, in case you don't remember. Scroll past the COVID musings and you can see a few of the awesome houses I fell in love with.

After the trip to Oregon and the unfortunate situation I found there, I promised myself a cruise as soon as reasonably possible once that chapter of my life had come to an end. Sadly, it came to a close sooner than expected... and now we're finally moving forward on selling Mom's house and settling her estate once and for all. That could take up to six months or more (I hope the house doesn't take too long though...), but that's okay.

Definitely looking forward to a week on a ship where I don't even have to cook or clean. And I'm coordinating to get my kids along as well. Unfortunately, we were never able to go on a real family vacation when they were all small. But having them all together as adults will be so much fun.

Not sure which port I want to leave from...I think I'd like to go back to New Orleans, to be honest. Granted, the drive there is three hours longer, but if you're gonna go on vacation and you don't get one very often, make it count, right?

If you've never been on a cruise and you want a behind the scenes look, (and if you have Amazon Prime,) there's a great documentary called The Secret Life of the Cruise available. It gives you a peek behind the curtain of a cruise. It's an amazing ballet of moving parts and well worth a watch even if you don't cruise.
 
 Let me know if you like to cruise or if you watched the documentary.

Have a great weekend and catch you next week!

Here a few picks from previous cruise posts so you don't necessarily have to click links...





Friday, March 27, 2020

Why Weren't We Prepared...?


Several people, and probably more, but including Bill Gates five years ago, predicted a pandemic.

Why was the United States, then, not prepared to handle a) testing, b) vaccinations, c) the needs of the health care system to handle those infected...at the very least?

Because politicians / the government are / is generally more concerned with their own wants and needs, as well as the here and the now issues of their constituents. While the government has a role in these types of extraordinary events, and while I'm disappointed in our preparedness, is it solely the government's responsibility to be ready?

What about the health care system itself? What abut the pharmaceutical companies? What about private companies and organizations? How much falls on an individual?

I don't know the best answer, of course... No one wants to prepare (i.e. spend money) for something that seems so unlikely to happen.

Being prepared aside, it's satisfying to hear / read about how people from across all manner of industries are doing what they can.

For example:

The family distillery who switched to making hand sanitizer and offering it to their community for free; they did ask for donations, if they could be spared, but they are not refusing to give out their product.

Bauer, a sports equipment manufacturing company, who switched to making face shields for health care workers instead of hockey masks.

There are more, but you get the idea.

Anyway, it's the weekend again. So here's to that. here's hoping my local grocery store won't look so bare Sunday morning. And here's to writing time, which I will have an abundance of tomorrow morning.

And finally...the last of the cruise pictures.

From our stop in Belize:





Next time we cruise and have a stop in Belize, I'm gonna spend the day on the beach. It was incredibly beautiful there. For the rest of the Belize pictures, click here.

From our stop at Costa Maya:








I might consider swimming with the dolphins on my next trip to Costa Maya--that looked like fun. So one of those dolphins was playing catch with those people up on the walkway in the background. For the rest of the Costa Maya pictures, click here.

 Have a great weekend. :0)


Friday, March 20, 2020

Thank Goodness It's Friday


If there was ever a time to say Thank Goodness It's Friday it's now. As things continue to slow and shut down, I'm glad it's the weekend.

A handful of our clients have decided to work from home, but that doesn't affect us much. We're still showing up every day and taking care of the back end side of IT.

I spent some time project planning yesterday as I mentioned Wednesday I needed to do. Looking at the breakout makes me want to not do at least one of them... If you're so inclined to see what my project planning looks like, it's here. The verbiage (project / phase / task) is taken from our software at work and worked well for my purposes. Plus it's always nice when my two worlds can cross-pollinate.

Home life is back to normal. The last piece was finding my charger cable for my car, and now that's back in the car... I'll go grocery shopping early Sunday morning as per usual and hope that the shelves look closer to full than to empty. But we'll make do with whatever I find. The dog will get her first bath in probably 4 - 5 weeks, poor thing. I'll prep food for the week. Laundry will get caught up once and for all. I can hardly wait.

I might -- MIGHT -- start on that garage project.

I'm already working on the Holiday / Disability Anthology.

Aspects of the weight loss project will be put into place.

And now...more cruise pics!! These are just general pictures from time on the boat...

The view from my in-law's cabin at the back of the boat.

Playing shuffleboard one evening,
even though none of us actually knew how to play.

The view down the side of the boat from deck 8, I think.

Chess, anyone?

For the rest of the randomness, click here.

Have a great weekend!


Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The best things about the cruise...


...aside from just generally being on vacation for a week+ were:


1. I got to eat ice cream everyday. Most days it was soft serve, but one day the soft serve machine was frozen and so I checked out the actual ice cream station and discovered coconut ice cream!! They didn't have it out every day, but I checked. :0)

2. Eating English muffins (with butter and strawberry jelly) and bacon and fresh pineapple every day for breakfast. :0)

3. Spending some quality time with DH. :0)

As I mentioned, I'd never been to New Orleans, so I was excited to visit the city, specifically and especially the French Quarter.

Here are a few fun pictures of my visit:

On the shelf at a local WalMart... hmmm...

I'm not a whiskey drinker, but the Jack Daniels commercials are usually amusing,
and so was this billboard.

These coi were just painted randomly on the sidewalk.


And what (first or any(?)) visit is complete without a visit to Cafe DuMonde for beignets??

DH and I woke ridiculously early our first full day in NOLA and made the stop at about 4am. Probably a good thing, because all the pictures I've seen of this place during they day--it's packed. So it worked out.

Beignets and cocoa FTW!!

More pictures to come.

Hope you're having a great week.

Monday, March 9, 2020

Didja miss me...?





DH and I were on an NCL cruise of the Western Caribbean along with my mother- and father-in-law.

We embarked from New Orleans--a city I'd never been to--so we traveled a day early so that we could explore the French Quarter a little.

There will be pictures and tales of our adventures coming soon. I meant to pre-schedule some posts for last week, but just ran out of time.

But I'm back and ready to get back into the regularly scheduled rhythms and routines of life.

Hope you're well and had a good week last week. See you Wednesday...

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Cruising the Caribbean


So... I was on a Western Caribbean cruise last week. My first cruise, as a matter of fact. We sailed on Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas--a very large ship. About as large, we discovered, as the USS Nimitz, the aircraft carrier my Sonshine's been on. :0)

From the gangway onto the boat...

DH and I traveled with my mother-in-law, both my sisters-in-law and one of their husbands. Sadly, the other husband couldn't get the time off work. There were a few challenges, but I think that overall everyone had an enjoyable trip. I did, and DH and I have already booked another cruise. Same ship, same ports of call, although we'll be traveling on our own next time.

This was our cozy cabin...


I'm standing up against the door looking in. The closet was at my left shoulder, the bathroom at my right (you can see the door handle, just there). For the amount of time we spent there, it was roomy enough. We did have a port hole behind the curtain.

The first full day was a sea day and DH wasn't quite sure how to power down enough to relax. :0) But here he is trying...



Each cabin obviously has a cabin steward to come perform housekeeping duties. Harris came twice a day, once in the am and once again during dinner, leaving us a towel animal each evening.


There's more to come, but that's it for today. Have you been on a cruise? If so, where'd you go?


Wednesday, June 7, 2017

A time for my first REAL vacation!!!


Royal Caribbean ship Liberty of the Seas 
(By Stephen & Katherine - Flickr: DSCF1152, CC BY 2.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21892394)


Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to me!! So, yeah...I'm going on my very first cruise with all of DH's family on a 7-day cruise to the Western Caribbean. Wow! Even DD has been on cruise. Sonshine's on a cruise on steroids right now. Not sure about my Brown-Eyed Girl.

Nope, I've never been on a cruise. I'm definitely excited, but I'm also a little nervous to be away from home for that long. House, dog, business... I know it'll be fine, but still.

Have you ever been on a cruise? Any suggestions, tips, advice?


Friday, July 17, 2015

Traveling!!


Aside from traveling within the United States, which I have done (Nebraska for my sister's wedding/Chicago to see Sonshine) and will be doing (Nebraska to see my newest little nephew/Seattle for a Sherlock con/Atlanta for 221B Con), I am planning to travel outside the borders of the US!


We are planning our first vacation in many many years (other than seeing family) and DH wants to go on a cruise. I've never been on one, but it sounds like a grand time, although my first vote was for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. :) DH has no desire to go there, so the cruise it is.

 (Image from WIKIPEDIA)

But imagine days and days of sunshine, reading (lots and lots and lots of reading), and being on the water--well sorta. Also, apparently there also all kinds of amenities like theaters and whatnot to do. So it's something I can definitely get behind.

But first--I need a passport in order to get back into the country, so I've been working on that....

Have a great weekend!