Christmas Cruise 2008

This post is going to be really long so I really don't expect anyone to read all the way through it. I just wanted to summarize our cruise before I forgot. So here it is our Christmas Cruise 2008. We left our house on Dec. 20 early in the morning and drove all the way to Mobile, AL. Luckily everything went smoothly and we had a great drive. We ate at a wonderful seafood house right on the water and then we stopped at a Krispy Kreme for donuts for breakfast. We were obviously from out of town I guess and the donut shop lady gave us our dozen donuts for free. We were so surprised and thought this was a great way to start out our vacation.

The next day we got going really early again and drove straight to Fort Lauderdale. We only got off the freeway for a bit to drive through St. Augustine and quickly got back on. We thought we would be able to drive and see the ocean like we did in California, but there are houses and trees between the road and the ocean so all we got was a lot of slow traffic lights.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to Ft. Lauderdale so we ate at a Burger King and went to bed. The next morning we got to sleep in, get a good breakfast at the hotel, pack up and get on the ship. We got on the hotel shuttle around 10:30 and we were on the ship eating lunch before noon. That was incredibly fast. We were one of the first people on the ship. It was nice to not have to wait in any lines. This ship is the same layout as the one we were on two years ago so we already knew where everything was. Our cabins were in a great location and next to each other. We were really glad to have two cabins. It was wonderful for Mark and I to have our own cabin. We just had to listen that the kids weren't fighting too much in their cabin :)

After we ate and looked around, we went up to the kids club. The manager was a girl we knew from our trip two years ago. It was fun to be able see her again. She remembered us and we got special treatment the entire trip so that was a bonus. Finally it was time for the oh so fun lifeboat drill. The picture below is the kids all decked out and ready to go.
Finally we were off. The first day on the ship is always a little crazy, but ours went relatively smoothly. We went to dinner and found we had a table to ourselves. Our waiters Zeffrenio and Laurenco from India were really nice. Dinner wasn't great, but it was the first day and so we didn't care. We were finally on the ship and ready to have a great time the next 11 days.
Here is the kids cabin at about the cleanest it ever got :) It was nice that my room stayed clean as long as the kids stayed out of it!! This is a bit out of order, but I didn't take enough pictures. Below is the Christmas tree and the presents Santa left.

Santa always comes on the ship and gives the kids presents. Mellie got a nice towel, Ryan a sweatshirt and Jill a great bag. Mark and I got bags too. Good thing because we needed them to pack for the trip home.
Our first day on the ship was a sea day. Mark was sick so he slept most of the day which was fine for all of us. It was good that he could be sick and not feel guilty about sleeping. The next day we were at Grand Cayman. We went to go swimming with the sting rays. The picture above is my only Grand Cayman picture. Someone on the boat was video taping us swimming with the rays and I expected to be able to buy a dvd. Unfortunately they never tried to sell us one and we forgot about it. Ryan and I went snorkeling which he loved. We saw lots of fish and sting rays. Then we got to get out on a sand bar and walk around with the rays all around us. Jill and Mellie were terrified, but it was very interesting to the rays try and knock us over. Some people got to hold them, but since I had a 5 year old permanently stuck to me I was not able to hold one.

The next day was Christmas and we opened presents, saw Santa and laid out in the sun. A perfect Christmas day. In the evening we had a formal dinner which we dressed up for and got our pictures taken. It was a very nice day overall.

The next day was at sea also. The ship was pretty rocky, but not near so much as when we went to Hawaii so we were all fine. We didn't do much other than lay in the sun and eat on this day too. Finally we got to another port which was Cartenega Columbia. Just Mark, Jill & I got off the ship here because we had heard some scary things about Columbia. It turned out to be much nicer than we expected though.

We grabbed a cab and he took us to Old City and waited for us. There we were able to buy things, we were looking for a Wal-mart, but no Wal-marts in Columbia I guess. We found a store called Exito though and it was just like a Wal-mart. Mark found some swimsuits there. While we were in line to pay a girl just kept staring at Jill. She got real close and when we tried to talk to her she didn't speak any English. I think she was amazed at Jill's blond hair and how tall she was. The picture below was a street in Old City. Very clean and nice. I guess since the cruise ships have started coming they have cleaned things up and tried to make them nicer.

We saw this cart below with the typwriter on it advertising that they would type for us. We couldn't resist the picture of what our data entry company would look like in Columbia!!
After Old City our cab driver took us to New City and dropped us off at an Emerald Factory. We didn't ask to go there, but they get money to drop off tourists there. We stayed for only a couple minutes and left again. Next we went to the fort pictured below. We climbed around that for a while, but it was really hot even for us so we decided to go back to the ship. The cab driver tried to rip us off, but we talked him down.

One of Mellie's favorite things to do on the ship is get her face painted. Here is one of many days that she was painted as a cat.
The next day we went to Panama, we only got off the boat here, shopped for a little bit and got right back on. We didn't see anything we wanted to do since we have already gone through the canal and the people here were very pushy.

The next day we went to Costa Rica. This was our favorite stop. Jill, Mark and I got off and found a cab and went zip lining. It was really fun, the picture below is of Jill & Mark all geared up. We were up in the jungle so it wasn't too hot and we got to go on 13 different zip lines. Some short, but some were really long and fast. It was really fun and we ran into people from the ship.

This was one of the platforms we zipped too. After we rode the zip lines we drove around for a bit and saw a very poor part of town and then a rich part. The houses we were told were very expensive and only the doctors could live here, they were about 60,000 dollars. We are ready to go move there!! After we got back to the ship I took Mellie off to the little market and she had a ball shopping. Everything was so cheap so she got almost everything she asked for. That is her kind of place.
This picture is of our waiters Zeffrinio and Laurenco. They were very nice and helpful and it was nice to be served for 11 nights.

After Costa Rica we had another sea day.
Our last port was Cozumel. We have been here several times and didn't have anything specific we wanted to do here so we asked around and kept being told to go to Chaunkahob (sp?) park. So off we went in a too expensive cab ride and this park is mostly for swimming with dolphins. We didn't want to do that so we just laid around and hung out. It was too cold for Mark & I to swim and too rough for Ryan to snorkel by himself so he was a little bit dissapointed, but he's ready to go back beause of the hammocks. That was a highlight for him getting to hang in a hammock.






We also saw lots of iguanas and even a conch moving around on the bottom of a pond. Jill got to hold an iguana and have a parrot put on her head, but they wanted $5 for me to take a picture with my camera. I'm too cheap for that :) That night was New Years Eve so below are pictures from that. We had another formal dinner and then there was a new years eve party on the pool deck.






Above is part of the ice sculpture that at midnight they broke the 8 and replaced it with a nine. Below is baby new year and Old man time.
Mellie who was mad we picked her up from the kids club went right to sleep on the counter where they give out towels. She didn't move for the entire hour and a half we were out there. Many people stopped and took pictures of her. We gave her blowers and took her picture of her celebrating New Years!!


This is Melanie's new boyfriend. His name is Cassio and he is from Brazil, she got really attached to him and only wanted to go to kids club when he was there. He was really sweet to her and almost cried when she was hugging him goodbye. She really has that effect on men already. I'm in big trouble when she gets older. We really missed Dave & Olesja from the last two Celebrity trips we took though. It just wasn't the same without them in the kids club.
This picture is Olea (sp?) the best friend that Mellie made. She was nine years old and so nice to Mellie. Mellie wanted to do the big kid stuff to be with her rather than the little kid stuff. She got Nellie the manager to let her be in an older kids group and that made her a little happier.

The last day on the cruise was a sea day. We just packed and shopped and did last day kind of stuff. We got off the ship on Jan 2. It was a lot harder to get off than in years past. It took us many hours to get through customs, but we were finally off and going by 11:30. We drove all the way to Pensacola the first day so we could see if this was a nice beach to go to. And yes it is. Then we made it all the way home the next day. What a wonderful way to spend Christmas and New Years. I can't wait to go again.