My friend Tara (aka Curly Sue) and I decided to go on a cruise for our birthdays (hers is the day before mine). After much research, pricing and deliberation we got an AWESOME deal on a 4 day cruise to the Bahamas which goes in and out of Miami. We were scheduled to stop in Nassau, Coco Cay (Royal Carribean's private island), and Key West.
Tara is in PIT right now for training. The boat didn't leave until Monday morning, but I started making my way across the country on Friday night. I have seen too many people that PURCHASED their ticket miss their cruise because they cut it too close, and something unforseen happened. Since I was traveling based on EMPTY seats, I wasn't taking any chances.
Friday, October 10th
I flew from Phoenix to Indianapolis and spent the night in the airport.
Saturday, October 11th
Terra's (not to be confused with Tara) husband cashed in hotel points and got Tara and me a hotel in Philly for Saturday night. We spend the night in Philly because that gave us the best chance to get to Miami Sunday morning.
I arrived in Philly at 9am and was at the hotel by 10. They let me check in early, I went to the hotel and went to bed. I finally woke up around 3pm and decided to walk around. The hotel was in downtown Philly and only about a mile from the historic district.
I walked down there and took some great pictures. I stopped at JFK Plaza and took pictures with the LOVE sculpture. I also took pictures in the plaza across the street with all the game pieces. From there I continued down toward the historic district. I got Lucy, Chloe and Hannah a postcard of the LOVE sculpture and walked the few blocks to the historic post office where they hand stamp your mail. It was now 4:50pm and I had just enought time to go see one thing, so I chose the Liberty Bell. I got some neat pics with the Bell and Independence Hall in the background. As I left the Bell, I could see they were still letting people into Independence Hall. Turns out that because it was Columbus Day weekend, they were open till 6. I got in line to see the hall. Several of the buildings had a phone number on them for a walking tour. You called the number and entered the building number and it gave you info, like an audio tour. Score! Something to do while in line, and since it is a weekend, it doesn't cost me any minutes! :)
After going through the hall I headed back to the hotel and walked through China Town. I met Curly Sue at at the hotel and we went to dinner and checked out some books I got from the library on the Bahamas and Key West.
Sunday, October 12th
We slept in and slowly made our way to the airport for our 12:15 flight. We got on no problem and even got an entire row to split between the 2 of us. We ended up sitting next to Mike and Chelsea. Mike works for the same airline. They also live in Phoenix, were going on a cruise, and had already been on the cruise we were going on. I got lots of good info about the cruise and the ports from Mike. He hasn't been with the company very long, they travel a lot, but I was still able to give him a few hints on traveling.
We made it to our GHETTO hotel. It was cheap and included free transportation from the airport and to the port, so it all worked out.
Tara decided she wanted to get her hair braided in a bunch of little braids for the cruise. I decided that was a good idea. The people at the front desk didn't know where we could get that done, but suggested we go to the Wal-mart. While we were waiting for the shuttle to take us, a woman we had come from the airport with came to the lobby. Tara told her about wanting to get her hair braided and the woman offered to do it for her, all we had to do was buy a bottle of alcohol to drink while she was braiding. Cool.
We went to Wal-mart anyway to get elastic bands. You can't buy alcohol in Miami on Sunday. All you can get is beer and wine. Tara chose a wine cooler to take to Shawn. We also got a few random odds and ends and ate dinner at a restaurant called Finnigan's. It was like a Texas Roadhouse. It wasn't as go as TR, but it wasn't bad. I would go back.
We got back to the hotel and went to Shawn's. Shawn and her god-mother were a blast. Shawn was in her early 40's and her god mother was in her 60s or 70s. Shawn did Tara's hair and complained about the alcohol we had brought. I asked Shawn to braid mine as well. She offered to do it for $20. Okay. Then it became $20 for each of us. Uh, ok. THEN it became $25 for each of us. We AGAIN agreed to the price, and she FINALLY stopped raising it. She was pretty drunk by the time she was finished with Tara's hair, and could barely stand up by the time she was done with mine. These were some of the WORST braids you have ever seen. I ended up redoing EVERY SINGLE ONE of Tara's. I took mine out after we returned to the boat on Thursday because I had given up on them. She did 12 on Tara and only 7 on me. Yep, they were bad.
Monday, October 13th
We woke up late since we had gone to bed late because of the hair braiding. Getting out of the hotel was a mess. Our safe wouldn't open, with all our stuff IN it, the phone didn't work, so I had to walk down to the front desk. We finally made it down to the lobby at the appointed time to meet the shuttle to take us to the port. There was very little instruction provided other than to give us a ticket like you would get for a raffel. When the shuttle did finally arrive, it was not announced, nor was it large enough to take everyone who had signed up. What a mess. Tara and I got on because she was aggressive enough to step in front of people and I followed. I was still trying to figure out how the whole thing worked. Silly me, there was no plan, hence the problem.
We made it to check in just fine, toured the boat, went to our room, got some food, completed the all important life boat drill, then went up on the pool deck for the "we are leaving port" festivities. All of the people being in one place was driving me nuts! As I was taking pictures, I screwed up and reformated my card. All the pictures I had taken in Philly were GONE! I was ill. I had decided it would be fun to go to Philly for a weekend, now I HAVE to go back because I need to replace those pictures!
Hurrican Omar was still a threat and not a hurricane yet. It was overcast and windy so we returned to our room (and to get away from all the people). We both ended up falling asleep and took a nap for several hours. We woke up in time for dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment