How Do You Spell That?

Played for a bit in the casino. Broke my cardinal rule of keeping my winning away and lost $20 playing blackjack. Need to go down when it's a bit busier. Tonight is the formal night so I'll upload pictures of us in all of our splendor later tonight.

Not much to do on the ship right now. Spent part of the afternoon on the balcony enjoying the view. More tomorrow.

-- Post From My iPhone

Posted by Brian at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Got up much earlier than expected today. DeAnn and I were ready to go at 7 surprisingly and saw people were getting off the boat quickly and off to Barbados we went.

The tour guides say that Barbados has a flavor of Britain in it since it was under Beitish Rule until 1966. And they are right, if you are just looking at the way the people drive and discussions of cricket matches on the radio. Other than that, it's a small Caribbean island with the same trinket shops mixed in between massive wealth and abject poverty.

Flipped for the (exceptionally expensive but not unexpected) $60 cab ride to the airport to catch the "Concorde Experience" which has a parked Concorde for your viewing pleasure. Learned more about Barbados as our driver took us on his errand run through the island. After winding through the streets which mirror any Caribbean island, we travelled through the sugar cane and sweet potato fields to get to the airport and today's

-- Post From My iPhone

Posted by Brian at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, they really get offended when you call it a boat. It's a ship.

So the boat is really nice. We woke up late and I did a quick run to McDs to avoid the $50 breakfast downstairs. Walked through some nice streets of Old San Juan but the city does have a homeless problem. There's a book somewhere to find out why these touristy areas have such a high homeless rate (besides the obvious, that's where the tourists/suckers are).

Hopped on the free trolley/bus ride of doom around old San Juan. Found out we might be able to get on the boat earlier, so we got off the trolley and on shared taxi ride later (with a couple from near Roanoke VA) and we got into the line you saw on FB.

Met the group in Kenn's suite and we all headed down for the muster drill. Nothing like being crammed together with 100 of your closest friends in 90+ weather. I probably could have rang out my shirt....

We were quite lucky to walk right into Dennis and Lisa on the way back from the drill and Scott and Dawn as well when we headed up to eat. The line was quite large and after some debate it was decided to raid Johnny Rockets.

Of course the food was great and out waiter pulled out every trick he could think of to get a nice tip. Got out of dinner and headed down to the bar to watch the game. We missed most of the first quarter due to Royal Caribbean not carrying NBC but apparently there were enough people screaming and the game was on soon enough.

Kenn and Tina joined us and a few adult beverages later we were all having a great time as usual. While the Bears game didn't turn out how it should have, everyone had at least fun. At the end ifthey game we all headed to bed to call it a night from day one on the boat.

-- Post From My iPhone

Posted by Brian at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AirTran 825 - MDW to MCO.

Bringing back lots of memories of the dozen plus times we've dragged the little ones down on the same pilgrimiage. The benefit here is I get to give nodding glances to the dads acting as pack mules who are carrying a stroller, three carry ons, and possibly a kid or two.

Kids start to whine as we get closer to our stopover. Parents are just wanting to get out of the sardine can with some sanity (and all their bags). Internet on the flight makes it completely bearable. Service on the flight is meh, but for cheap tickets and such, it's worth the money.

The gate area we are in has an Outback Steakhouse, so we'll hit that during our three hour layover in MCO. More later.

-- Posted From My iPhone

Posted by Brian at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)