Cruise

Well we arrived in Charleston on Friday night. The lovely Hudson family welcomed us with open arms and lots of toys thanks to Hank. We got settled and headed out for some Charleston food and then headed out with the kiddies to a local bar. It was a lot of fun getting to know more about my semi-new relatives and getting to stay out late without worrying about a certain Mr. Sparrow. Saturday morning we got up and had some yummy homemade breakfast by Chef Joe and then took a ride around the city and its fabulous islands. Man…when we get rich…we are SOOOO having a place there.

We headed to the boat around 1 and had no trouble getting in line the drop off was super smooth. We dropped our bags at the central location and were shuttled the ½ mile to the port…no wonder America is fat…we can’t expect anyone to walk 15 feet anymore. But anyways, we then waited in the terminal in a line of angry old people. Wanna talk about cranky old bats? Geez! You would think we were stealing their seat at bingo or something. Anyways, we got our room key and set up our on board credit card and off we went.
Right off the bat on the boat we had to “de-germ”. Now I know a lot of people worry about cruises and the gastrointestinal nightmares but I have never had such clean hands. Everywhere you go you are to “de-germ”. Every bathroom reminds you at least 8 times between the sink and the door and don’t even think about walking into a restaurant without squirting pure rubbing alcohol on your mitts. After the alcohol dousing, we preceded to see more fat Americans taking the elevator EVERYWHERE. We never took the elevator so I am pretty sure I burned off all the crap I ate just taking the stairs everywhere…and it was great because we were the only ones!

Not to bore you to death but here is a recap of a few things we did on the boat while at sea. They had a lovely workout facility that we visited everyday*(I skipped one day for a nap!). They also had a track around the boat so Kevin and I ran around a few times until we found fighting fat old people lying in the middle of the track was annoying to say the least. There were supposed to be some fitness classes but there never were any…which wasn’t surprising since it didn’t seem there would be a high demand from the casino hoping, buffet eaters. We also treated ourselves to full body massages in the spa onboard…it was fine but the price was ridiculous and the prices only went down as the week went on…needless to say, I was a little angry. We also caught the shows at night which included a Broadway tribute(B-), a ventriloquist(A+), a newlywed game show(A), and a comedic version of the game balderdash(B+). Overall, the entertainment was…entertaining. They also had a super bowl party on Sunday but they only got a NFL network feed and we didn’t get any commercials…boo. There was also a library with board games that kept Kevin and I entertained a few afternoons. I know we are pretty much nerds EVERYWHERE…but I kicked ass at scrabble :). Every night they would have a WiiSPN sports thing. We only went one night but, of course, we totally dominated in bowling and I walked away to champ! Of course there were the pools but wanna walk about getting grossed out? I saw a woman in her 70’s in a bikini and some beer guts that I didn’t think were physically possible. Anyway the boat was fun enough but we wished there would have been more of our type of thing on the boat.

Grand Cayman was our first stop. We really liked this. We signed up on the boat for an excursion to tour the island and visit the turtle farm. This was a great choice. Since we signed up for the excursion, we got to get off the boat first! So we were tendered into the island because of the coast line and then boarded a bus to tour the island. We had a great guide that Kevin swears looked like Tiger Woods. I personally think he is crazy. Anyway, we saw the 7 mile beach and some typical housing and landscape of the island before arriving at the turtle farm. They have TONS of sea turtles and actively preserve the species…so there was a big “love” pond. Man it got CRAZY in there! We also saw smaller turtles in the smaller tanks and even got to pick some up! It was really fun and interesting. We then went to Hell and saw the rock formations there and saw all the tourist crap. We then went back through the developing part of the island. I say developing but I don’t mean like a 3rd world country. They were doing construction and repairs from recent hurricanes. Once again, we had an annoying older lady on the bus that would ask at EVERY stop if you could drink the water. The guide kept telling her “Ma’am the island doesn’t have any rivers so we import our drinking water in bottles”. But for some reason this woman had the brain capacity of a one of the sea turtles so I guess she figured were arriving in a new land at each stop. It was quite funny. We got back and did some shopping around but everything was VERY touristy so we just got a few gifts for people and a map of the Caribbean for the river and came on back to the boat.

Wednesday we stopped in Cozumel. We signed up for an excursion at a beach resort where we could lay around like beach bums. This was great. We met at the port and were bused to a beach “resort” about 8 miles down the beach. This was a resort like place but no actual hotel to it. It was made for just this purpose. You could go and eat at a Mexican buffet, lay of the beach, get free drinks, jump on water trampolines, swim in the pool or the ocean, and just do whatever. They also did jet ski rides for a cost which made us feel like royalty actually owning one. $35 to ride for 15 minutes! It was a lot of fun and just a good relaxing time. Overall Cozumel wasn’t our favorite. The city was very touristy. All the shops are trying to get you to come in and buy their cheap crap. It was very annoying after a while. To note, Grand Cayman was not like this at all. We could see going back there….Cozumel…not so much. And more and more, I am embarrassed to be around Americans outside of the country. I need to learn another language just to seem not related.

Thursday afternoon we arrived in Key West. We took a trolley into town and walked Duvall St. We ate at this Cheeseburger place and then wandered around looking in shops and got some Key Lime pie at this Kermit’s place. It was really good but man was I full after that. We walked around until about 8:30 or so and then decided to go back to the boat. We liked Key West enough but since we aren’t the bar hopping type, it was only as fun as shopping in touristy stores can be. I also forgot my camera but I figure you can just Google image search key west and get the gist.

Well we got back Saturday morning at 7AM and had a super easy time getting off the boat and Joe came to pick us up. We then went out to breakfast and this super cute diner place with Ella, Allen, and Michelle. We then visited Magnolia Plantation. I think we got better pictures there than on the whole cruise. It was great getting to hang out with the fam. We decided we could have easily spent a week in Charleston!

SO thanks goes out to the Hudson clan for putting up with us. It is really great to have such an awesome family. Well we are now back in the trenches at work….where the only ocean is on my desktop background…o well…at least there aren’t any old feisty people in it 🙂