Cruise 2010 Day 3

We arrived in Key West around 10:00 a.m.  Joe and I got up and got ready and went to the breakfast buffet before getting off the ship.  These are some pictures of our view from our balcony.

Gorgeous water!

It was very humid.  The forecast said 96% humidity!

An island off Key West.

Joe at breakfast.

Me at breakfast.

Us when we got off the boat in Key West.

Our ship.

Key West.  It was so nice!

A cute ice cream parlor.

This store was awesome!  I got a necklace, and wish I had gotten more.  Their stuff was so cute!!

I love key lime pie!

This store is so great!  All of their stuff changes color in sunlight.  The t-shirts are black and white, and when you walk out in the sun they get very colorful.  It is awesome!

Most of the places I went were on Duval Street.

Fresh Produce and Chico's!!!

Chico's, Claire's, and Bath and Body Works.......I could definitely live here!!

Joe and I stopped in Hagan Daas for some water.

It was HOT outside!

They had this awesome hammock store.  The guy that owned it made all of the hammocks!

We went in this store that had little girl clothes on one side and dog clothes on the other!  ha.  We found a handmade in Key West dress for Percie.  It is SO cute on her.  I will have to take a picture and add it.

This was the name of the store.

Making our way down Duval Street.

To the ocean!  It was beautiful!

This is one of the beaches.  There was a pier that went out over the water,

and I sat down and put my feet in the water.  It felt great!  It was so cool!!

Then we made our way to the southernmost point int he continental United States.  There was a long line of people waiting to get their picture made.  There was a couple in line behind us, and I asked them if they would take our picture.  And I offered to take their picture when it was their turn.  Worked out great!!

Joe got a bottle of water,

and I got a snow cone from

this guy in this truck.  It was awesome!  Joe decided to take a different way back to the boat and go by some military something.  He just told me it was the Coast Guard Cutters-A World War II Patrol Boat.  He said my grandfather was on one.  It is nice that he knows these things!  Ha!

I wanted to stop in a few more places on Duval on my way back, so we parted ways.  Don't worry......Key West is very safe.  He left me the map......if you know me very well you probably LOL at that statement.  I am not the best map reader and have NO sense of direction!  He said it made him feel better to leave it with me. I don't know why.....

I stopped at this place and finished my snow cone.

And they had a water bowel for dogs.  Key West was very dog friendly.  Almost all of the places let you bring your dogs inside and there were a lot of people walking their dogs.  There were also a lot of "doggie bars".  They were varying sizes of water bowls next to the bar!  Ha!

I got a cute Key West shirt in this store.

I went in this doggie shop because they had doggie stuff, and puppies!!!

I went in the original Margaritaville!

And they had a dog wall of fame of all of the dogs who had visited from other places.

Isn't this hilarious?!?

They had Vera in the Fresh Produce shop.  Love it!

There is a funny story behind this picture.  Okay, so I remembered that we walked down Green Street to get to Duval Street.  So, when I got the the corner of Duval and Green I knew I needed to turn.......I just did not know which way.  I was really tired and did not want to go the wrong way and then have to turn around and go back.  I look both ways, and when I looked right I could barely see the red white and blue of the Carnival ship.  If you look really hard behind the red building you can see it.  I was so happy to see the ship!!  I knew which way to go!! Whew!

Yay!  Joe and I had decided to meet back in our room.  I beat him!  I was already out of the shower by the time he got back.  He got lost!  Ha!  He said the map was wrong........whatever!!  We were hot and tired, so he took a shower while I ordered room service for lunch.

I had a .......ham and cheese.  Surprise!

He had a reuban.  Then we took a nap.......and slept through dinner.

When we got up we went up to the Lido deck and had a sandwich.  

Joe had a salmon on a bagel......

I had a hot ham and cheese.

We watched the sun set.

Then we went to the show.  It was a hypnotist.  It was kind of lame, so we left.  We went and looked at our pictures that we had had taken.  We saw Preston and Farren and laughed together at how bad our pictures were.  Needless to say we did not purchase any!

There is a library on the ship, and Joe wanted to check it out.

He got this book on ships to read.  He said it was one he almost bought one time, so he was pretty excited to get to read it.

 

When we got back to our room-Room number 6209 (we were on the 6th deck up----way above the water level!)-we found

An elephant!

Joe and the elephant.

We sat out on the balcony for a minute (OMG look at how red my shoulders are.  I have to give Joe props.  He carried my bag all the way around Key West because it hurt so bad to put it on my shoulders!  This burn is from the day before-our day at sea.  Ouch!), then we headed to bed.  We have a great day at the beach in Freeport, Bahamas planned for the next day.

One last look at the water in Key West.

Rae

Cruise 2010 Day 2

I woke up before the alarm went off on Sunday, May 16, 2010.  It was our first day at sea, and our room was BURNING UP!  We had left the balcony door open all night because we were hot before we went to bed.  I got up and closed the door.  I searched the room for a thermostat and could not find one.  We decided to go to breakfast and give the room time to cool back off before we called someone......you know, in case it was in fact our fault for leaving the balcony door open all night.  

One positive was the beautiful view!  We had crossed over into the gulf during the night.

Blue water!

Our room was at the very front of the ship.  We had a great view!

The breakfast buffet was awesome!

Joe enjoying his breakfast!

This is one of the pools.  There were 3 full size pools and a 1 foot deep wading pool for little ones.  Everyone was enjoying the sun after the rainy day we had in New Orleans.

We went back to the room after breakfast and our room was still HOT!  I called the room steward to make sure I wasn't missing the thermostat.  He said that there was not one in the room and that the air conditioning was BROKEN for our room and a few others and that the engineers were working to fix the problem.  Uugghh!  He said they would have it fixed soon.  He also brought me an extra pillow.  I usually take my pillow every where, but I forgot it!  I won't do that again!

So we went to the Fun Ashore and Aboard talk.  It was very informative of what to expect in our ports of call.  

It was in the Rome Lounge where all the shows are every night.  It is a very large auditorium with a balcony.  

Joe fell asleep.  I really don't blame him....it wasn't very entertaining.  But it was informative.  Usually when Carnival docks in Key West they dock at the military base which isn't very close to anything, but they were docking a block from Duval Street this time (with in walking distance of everything we wanted to see).  So, I decided that I would rather go snorkeling in the Bahamas instead of Key West because we could shop and explore the island in Key West.  Lenny, our Cruise Director, told us it would be about a 15 minute drive to the beach and shopping in Freeport, Bahamas, from where we docked.  So we decided to take a shore excursion in Freeport to the beach and go snorkeling in Nassau, Bahamas.  Luckily the nice lady at the shore excursion desk let us change our shore excursion reservations.

The water......our view from the balcony.

It was kind of cloudy, but not too bad.

Joe and I on the balcony.

Sea days on the cruise were so relaxing!

Us in the elevator.

One of the bars in the lobby.  The boat is so ornate, and that is usually not my style, but I thought it was very pretty!

We ate lunch by

 by the pool on the back deck.  They keep the pools cooled, so they feel great!  The pools are salt water pools........not like the salt water pools that people put in their back yards, but salt water from the ocean.  I thought that was kind of cool!

Joe brought me this piece of key lime pie he found at one of the buffets.  It was great!

The pool deck.

Us on the deck

Joe thinking about being in the hairy chest contest.  They have all kinds of contests and games the whole week on the boat.  It is SO much fun! 

He decided to do it!

And he did great!

And he got a medal!

Then he went to get a diet coke, because it was HOT outside.  And we saw Preston and Farren, and chatted with them for a while.  Then we went to the art auction.  They had some great art.  I should've taken some pictures.

Then we went back to our room, and it was still HOT.  So I called the front desk.  They sent someone to our room to check the temperature.  It must have been pretty hot because he didn't tell me the temp and he kept apologizing and telling me they were fixing it as fast as they could.  

I was a little worried because it was time to get ready for dinner.  It was elegant dinner night, so we had to look nice.  We opened the balcony door, and there was a nice breeze.  As we were leaving for dinner, they fixed it!  Yay!  No more being hot!

As I mentioned, our room was at the very front of the boat................dinner was at the very back of the boat!  Ha!  It was a very long, quick (because I was always running late) walk every night down this never ending hallway!  Ha!

Joe and I before dinner.

Joe at dinner.

Joe had lobster and shrimp.

I had pasta!  I don't usually like alfredo, but this alfredo was good.  It also had bacon in it.  So good!

Joe with his banana cake. 

Me with my goudo cheese and fruit.  It was my dessert of choice most nights.  Their grapes were wonderful!  You can't buy grapes like that in the grocery store.

Us at dinner.  This nice older couple that sat behind us asked us if we were newlyweds.  Ha!  I don't think she thought I was telling the truth that this was our 30th birthday present to each other and we had been married 6.5 years.  She told us her and her husband had been married for 48 years.

Us after dinner.

Us at the show.  The show was called Wonderful World with the Carnival singers and dancers.  It was different music and dances from around the world.  I really enjoyed it! 

When we got back to our room, there was a monkey waiting on us!

This picture is kind of out of place, but this is the deli that is open from 11 am to 11 pm every day.  This guy made the best sandwiches! Ham and cheese is usually what I had for lunch every day.

This is the very large movie screen that was outside on the deck.  They showed a different movie every night.

Us sitting outside.  It is amazing how much sun you can get in one day!  ha.  My shoulders burned pretty bad.  I guess that is what I get for giving up the tanning bed.  We tried to go to the late night comedy show in the Rio lounge at 10:45, but it was packed.  There wasn't even any room to stand.  So we headed back to the room.

This map was so cool.  I should've turned the flash off because it is kind of hard to see.  The red lights are the route we were going to travel.  The lights turned green to show you where we had already been.  Where ever we were on the route, that light blinked.  As you can see.......we still had a long way to go.  I think the television showed that we traveled something like 1874 nautical miles total in 7 days!

It was a great, relaxing day at sea.  We went to bed fairly early to get ready for Key West the next day.  I went to Key West on a cruise for my senior trip, so it had been a while and Joe had never been.  We were so excited!  They delivered a map to our room that night, so we looked at the map and planned where to go the next day.

Rae