Got a new puppy today. Her name is Zoe. She's a mastiff mix. I think she is going to be huge. But we'll see. She is really sweet, but already quite a bit of work. Like most pups, she doesn't really like her kennel at the moment. It took her half an hour to stop crying tonight. Hopefully she'll get better sooner than later.
Cruising is fun. I am not sure if it is my favorite type of vacation. It is a unique experience...well compared to other vacations. The actual cruise experiences are rather cookie cutter. Seems that long time cruise vacationers have difficulty finding new things to do. Every day has similar scheduled activities and menu items are standard American buffet or restaurant fare. They do have a couple unique restaurants. For a flat cover fee you can dine there. We went to the steakhouse. The steak was impressive and the cute little appetizers and large desserts were very tasty. One aspect I'd the cruise that never fails to impress is the superb service staff. The wait staff is great at what they do and the room attendant assigned to us is amazing as well. Almost everyone we've encountered in the service department really helps make the trip.
Cruises have too many nights that require dressing up. I really dislike getting dressed up. Every now and then I forget how dumb it is and think it will be cool. Then I dress up and cannot wait to get out of the ridiculous clothes and uncomfortable shoes. We did however go to every single dress up night and an additional one at the steakhouse. Why? Well apparently the cruise saves the best dinner faire for dress-up night, which means if you want to eat anything but buffet food, you dress-up. Oh well, we changed as soon as we finished dessert. :-)
A cool thing about the cruise is it took us to 4 different islands. This was sweet. However, they pulled into and out of port on the ship's schedule, which sometimes meant early mornings. Not the coolest. But it was still nice. We drove around Nassau and Providence Island of the Bahamas for the better part of a day and found a nice beach to tan on. The water there was rather cold, probably because it was the Atlantic still, but we enjoyed watching the ocean and having fried conch at a local joint. Next stop was St. Thomas. There we went on a shore excursion that we had previously booked through the cruise line. It was a lot of fun. The catamaran took us to St. John, which is a pretty smaller island with pretty clear water and decent snorkeling. On the way back the crew raised the sails and took the scenic way back, while serving us Champagne and rum punch. We bonded more with a couple we'd met at The Alchemy, a hang out spot on the ship. We spent a good amount of our evening free time with them and also took a tour with them to the Bacardi factory in Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico was our next stop. We got a taxi to the local rum factory and took a tour and then had lunch at a good Puerto Rican restaurant in old town San Juan. Our last stop, and one of the neatest islands, was Grand Turk. It seems to be 100% reliant on tourism, and mostly cruse tourism. It has a barrier reef that made our power snorkeling excursion very cool, and we heard made for an amazing scuba diving experience. The water was incredibly blue and clear. The only unsettling part was the barracuda that kept following us around. The island itself seemed to be falling apart quite a bit. They were still recovering from a Hurricane that hit some 4-5 years ago. I can't imagine the cost of living there. The island's main resource was its salt lakes that are no longer worked. But for a tourist, it is an ideal location to visit. The last bit of our cruise was a day at sea that we spent learning about the history and making of cocktails. We hit a storm mid-afternoon which made the ship rock quite more than normal, but the ship is so big it did little more than make walking in a straight line or standing still hilarious.
