Finishing the trip

I think I covered all the destinations... now I'll talk about the ship time.

I didn't realize when we booked this that the best part about a cruise is literally having to worry about nothing. They totally pamper you. Normally our vacations are in a time share and we fix meals to save money... but this means there are several "homemaking" type projects to do with dishes, cooking, etc.

On a cruise you literally eat whatever you want whenever you want and the food is outstanding. With Nicol's family, we took up an entire table for the formal dinner. I thought I wouldn't like the formal dinners, but given the food and the atmosphere, it was one of the highlights of the whole trip. Dad would have loved all the "dinner tricks" they did... Oh yeah, except I showed them the "pull the cork from the wine bottle one"... they had not seen that one. Here's a picture of our servers: Vernon and Clifford

Anyway, having a four course meal each night of excellent food rocked. We drank virgin daquiris and pina coladas every night to go with appetizer, soup/salad, entre, and desert. The portions were just right so we didn't finish each night so full it hurt... and some nights we ordered double appetizers or even entres if we wanted. Usually the standard dinner was enough... but things like chilled shrimp for the appetizer needed to be eaten twice just to be sure it was really as good as the first time.

There were lots of activities including great shows every night, pools, video games, shuffleboard, ping pong, and many on-board classes and crafts. But the kids' favorite was probably the rock wall. Here's a picture of Krista at the top:


This wasn't just our family... Nicol's parents paid for the tickets for the family (waaaay many thanks for that one) which included Trevor and his family and Nicol's parents. Here's a picture Trevor, Maryanne, Dad and Mom in the theater seats (the theatre where we had the evening entertainment was awesome).

Finally, we did not get home without a hitch. After we docked, I went to pick up the car from long term parking. Instead of driving between the lines, I must have been still thinking of waves because I bent down to pick something up ("I'm picking something up!") and hit the side of a concrete barrier, broke the radiator, and we ended up in LA two extra days to get that taken care of. Here's a picture of that:

The kids were very happy to miss a couple extra days of school and I am still getting compliments from them on my excellent driving skills (yes, girls only like guys with skills).

From the family this trip rated just behind Hawaii in all time great trips. I was a little surprised they didn't like Disney better... but this was a really terrific trip.