TR: Norwegian Pearl Pt. 5: Doing Nothing is Awesome (1/5-1/8/2012)

Travel, when done right, is a window to the world. Its a way to experience personal growth. And sometimes it is none of that. Sometimes, it is about going to the cruise ship pool and doing laps, learning that your fat ass barely moves on the slide up on deck 12, eating delicious food is delicious, and on and on. That was the final three full days of our cruise.

We intended, originally, to depart via tender to Grand Cayman and snorkel off the shore. Then we saw that it was a long slow tender ride to the port on the island furthest from the area we wanted to snorkel. And it was cold and threatened rain. So we stayed on the empty ship, ate, slept, used the pool, sat in the lounge and drank, played tennis, whatever we wanted to do that wasn’t real activity. We work hard, we lounge hard. At night, we saw “That’s Entertainment”, the required production show that features Dancing Queen, as dictated by Maritime Law. There was also a suite only free drink session with the big wigs of the ship that we attended and talked to no one at except ourselves. There was free drink after free drink, and after 4 rum punches and a glass of wine, it is entirely honest to tell you that I wasn’t the least bit drunk. What a let down.

TR: Carnival Legend (7/18-25/2010)

Following our long day at Busch Gardens Tampa, my wife and I returned to our hotel, the Radisson Tampa Airport. We enjoyed our night of sleep and woke up to room service and watching a variety of mid-size jets take off and land. There was even enough time to see HBO’s boxing from the prior night replay before going to a cab and the dock. Upon arrival, it was basically the same scene of chaos as seen in Copenhagen, though nowhere as near as bad as New York when we sailed from those ports. We learned our pro tip, which is that arriving with about 30 minutes left in the boarding process apparently leaves you without needing to wait in line when you arrive, unlike us timely folk who ended up having to stand in seemingly endless queuing.

We were able to immediately head to our cabin, which was a balcony on the 7th deck. For a cruise ship, it felt pretty big, perhaps thanks to the 40 square feet of balcony and enormous window. We met our room steward who promptly rubbed my belly as an illustration of my need to lose some weight should I ever be interested in training at Fairtex (he was from Thailand), and we pulled out from the dock. The trip out from Tampa was quite nice – three hours in we went under the Sunshine Bridge, which our captain pulled the horn on as we passed underneath it.