Debarkation

We got up EARLY to have breakfast before we got off the cruise ship. Oh, throughout the trip, I forgot to mention that the walls of our cabin are kind of thin. So we got hear cabin next to us, which we have deemed the "honeymoon cabin". And dude, they were going at it at 6:30 in the morning!!!! GEEZ, give it a rest! On a side note, Steven was particularly impressed by the guy's endurance. :D I'm so glad we never found out who they were...

Anyway, we had breakfast with the honeymoon couple from the first day. We all caught up on what had happened since we last saw each other. On the night of the major boat rocking, the husband had gotten so sick that he got a shot so he'd stop throwing up. And I thought I got major motion sickness!

After breakfast, we went back to the cabin to wait for their announcement to get off the ship. After getting a call from Steven's mom, we decided to just take our luggage out and see what was going on. There was already a line to get off the ship! They never announced it. Well, anyway, we got off and went through customs. By the time we got out of the customs building, we saw Steven's mom waiting for us and we got picked up right away.

I guess our vacation wasn't totally over yet. When we got back to their home, we took a nap since we were so pooped from our lack of sleep the night before. Afterwards, had a nice lunch. We didn't start our drive home until after dinner. The night drive was very smooth - we got home in under 6 hours. Usually it takes us exactly 6 to drive between the two homes.


So overall, we had a very relaxing vacation...it was so hard to go home and be responsible again. Thus, the late posting on this blog. :p

Day 7: Final Day at Sea

Today was our very last day of the cruise. We slept in and watched two movies: The Devil Wears Prada and X-Men 3. The cruise had movies playing constantly on three different channels, one movie per channel starting every two hours. Very cool. So when we missed the first part of X-Men, we just waited for the reel to begin again to watch the part we missed.

Since it was the last day and we had been guilty of eating dessert at every dinner, we went to the gym to work out. As we had predicted, there were very few people using the gym. We saw these three really hot women working out in there. After we finished using the treadmill, while walking out, our conversation went something like this:
Me: "I was working out two treadmills away from a girl with really pretty legs."
S: "I saw a really hot girl using one of the machines."
Me: "I guess they deserve to be hot, huh? Since they work for it."
S: "Yeah. Who would've thought that some of the passengers would be in such great shape?"
Then we both figured out that they were probably part of the cruise dance group. :p

After we showered and freshened up, we went to the all day grill on the Lido deck. I think Steven wanted to get some extra snacking in because it was the very last day. When we sat down, I overheard a really funny comment at the table next to us. This guy walked over to this lady and said,"All I see you do is eat on this cruise." Hopefully he knew her REALLY well. Otherwise, he'd get smacked.

Anyway, after dinner, we watched the final show. We were able to meet up with the couple we had dinner with on the first night of the cruise to see the show together. Throughout the week, passengers were auditioning to be part of the final show. There were auditions to be Madonna, Britney Spears, Frank Sinatra, etc. And this was the show when these passengers would perform the songs and have backup singers and dancers. Overall, the people who got the parts were very talented. We were very very impressed with "Madonna" and "Elvis". We had actually watched these two passengers audition on the second night of the cruise!

After the show, we went up to the Lido deck for some nighttime snacking. Steven was definitely trying to take advantage of the all day food. So was the other husband, apparently. That day, he had ate four hamburgers and four pastrami sandwiches from the grill! He's a really big guy so he can really pack it away. So, both he and Steven had a sandwich while me and his wife were very through with the unnecessary eating.

We had a very good last conversation about raising kids. Even though they were only a few years older than us, they already had a pre-teens. So they were telling us the trial of raising adolescents. The conversation was triggered by the huge group of teenagers and pre-teens up so late and largely unchaperoned in the dining area we were in. Apparently, the wife had seen a few of them snogging around the ship during the week. Kinda disturbing. We'd seen one group earlier on the cruise wrestling. In one way, the wrestling is very innocent. But in another way, if they knew it, it was very sexual. MAN, raising teenagers is gonna be very challenging.

Day 6: Cabo San Lucas

Since Steven and I have both been to Cabo separately, we really did not prioritize this port, preferring to sleep in. :p

We woke up and ate lunch. At our lunch table, we met a couple that had been married for 55 years! They had great grandchildren! Pretty crazy. There was also another couple there that we had met over breakfast or lunch earlier on the cruise. Anyway, we all ended up talking about the national debt and how the current average savings rate is zero. It was very interesting to get the oldest couple's view point because both husband and wife were born during the Depression. So they were always taught "if you own it, they can't take it away."

Anyway, after lunch, we decided to head to Cabo. We had to get onto a tender to get to and from Cabo. There wasn't much we wanted to do so just we just walked along the marina. Again, lots of vendors along the path. We walked to the end of the marina to the Museo de Tequila, pretty much a one-room museum about the discovery and process of making tequila. We didn't know that the designation "tequila" to Mexico is the same as "champagne" is to France.

Since it was very hot, we went into the mall, which is pretty much like any American mall, only with some different brands. It was a brand new mall so only the first story was ready. The second floor was pretty empty except for a few stores. After getting some soda and sitting around a Christmas display inside the AC'd mall, we were cool enough to head back out. We walked along the marina back to the tender. Before we got to the end of the marina, we saw a guy painting tiles with his finger. Very cool! So we bought some painted tiles with our last pesos and the woman at the stand threw in a free turtle bobble head for us. hehehe. On the tender, we actually got a very good view of our cruise ship although it was hard to take a level picture in a moving boat.

Cabo is definitely an American vacation destination since we saw a lot of expensive boats docked in their marina and some very expensive yachts in the bay. We were told that all the expensive boats we saw were owned by Americans.

Dinner that night was very entertaining...during dessert, all the servers started dancing to music. Some of them got on top of their serving tables to dance! Many of them had on these big fluffy sleeves especially for this show. The after dinner show was an awesome last show by the onboard dance group. The show featured hit songs from all the major music movements starting from the 60s. It was a very fun show!

We waited up that night for the midnight Gala Buffet. They let us into the dining room an hour before it started so we could take pictures and look at their finished product. I think we're getting old because we didn't stuff our faces at the buffet - we just took a little to eat just to say we went. It was definitely more interesting to see the finished product than to eat it. But the whole display was very impressive and well worth staying up. :)