Cruisin'

Our cruise left port on a Monday, but since it was about a 6 hour drive from my parent's place to Mobile, we left Sunday afternoon. We couldn't embark until 12:30, so we decided in the morning to tour the USS Alabama (museum) that was docked nearby. In fact, we could see our cruise ship from aboard the battleship!

Here is Ben standing in front of the battleship before we began our self-guided tour.

Ben standing with very large missle shells.

This seems like a good seat!

On deck. At the front of the boat (where the little flag is), we could see an alligator in the water.

Ben, standing in front of the largest guns. I have to admit, I had more fun touring this ship than I thought I would. I don't think I would ever want to be on one out at sea though. It made me wonder how a battleship that is still being used might compare. We also toured an old submarine that was part of the museum, too. Then we were on to our cruise ship!

Here is a picture of our room. When we were standing in line to board the ship, I said to Ben that now I kind of wished we had gotten a room with a window. I remember when we booked our cruise we debated paying a little extra for an outside room vs. an inside room. So I was pretty happy when we got to our room and it had a window!! (I had not remembered correctly what we decided!) We enjoyed being able to see out and have natural daylight.

The ship had an 8 hole mini golf course on the top deck. It was a little breezy up there which added a challenge to our play!

Every night after we came back from dinner, our bed had been turned down, and a little towel animal rested on top. We got a different animal each night. We also got a new "FunTimes" which had the next day's activities listed.

Here is a picture of our boat docked at Cozumel. It's kind of hard to see, but I circled our room's window in yellow. What looks like a little row of black boxes toward the middle front half of the ship are the few rooms that had balconies. Our room was the 6th window to the left of the balconies, under the red line. We thought we had a good location: it was quiet and we didn't feel a whole lot of the motion from the sea.

In Cozumel, we went snorkeling. It was my first time and lots of fun. Sorry, I don't have any pictures to share of that... we did use an underwater camera but I haven't developed it yet. We also shopped a little bit, but then came back to the boat to eat lunch. Since we were in our swimsuits and there was hardly anyone on the ship, we decided to try out the waterslide a few times (Ben is at the top). I guess the curvy waterslide is something unique to Carnival Cruises. On days that we were at sea, there was always a long line to use the slide (usually kids).

Also, when we came back from snorkeling, there was another Carnival cruise ship docked right next to us - the same size/model of boat as ours. There was also a Royal Carribean cruise liner nearby that seemed huge in comparison... but no fun waterslide that I could see! :)

Another towel creature... a sea turtle.

A picture of the boat docked at Calica, Mexico. We got off the boat early to go have a Dolphin "encounter" - where we were in the water with dolphins and got to touch them and give them a kiss (at which point an employee would snap our picture and then try to sell it to us for $25). Um, no thanks, amigo.

Here we are standing in front of the Mexican shoreline at Calica. As you can see, there is nothing there. It was a gravel pit on the other side of the ship. Playa del Carmen was about a 10 minute taxi ride away and Cancun was another 45 min after that.

An elephant wearing Ben's sunglasses (the steward did that, not us!).

This was our last night onboard, sitting in the dining room. I would say that this was one of the things I most enjoyed about the ship - the really good food and getting to know people at our table. (Another thing was having somebody else clean our room twice a day!!) We sat at a table with four other couples (one of whom we had met while standing in line the first day... how random is that??). Besides the dining room, you could also eat on the top deck at their buffet for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Plus they had a grill (burgers), deli and mongolian wok. And a pizzeria that was open 24 hours.

We both really enjoyed our vacation. The weather was great. The food was great. The room was great. We hope to do it again someday... maybe next time with friends- for anyone who might be interested! :)