4:10 p.m.

Tuesday
Costa Maya, Mexico
January 20, 2009

Costa Maya, Mexico (more specifically Majahual) was our first port on the cruise.  It was the perfect weather for January – Sunny and 77° with 70% humidity…wonderful.  As you can tell from this picture I was just a tad excited to be there.  I fell in love with the area as soon as I woke up and looked out the window.  I had decided the day before to take a picture of the first thing I see in the morning (outside the window, of course).  This was the first thing I saw.  We arrived in Costa Maya about 45 minutes early which gave us a little extra time to have breakfast and make our way ashore.  We found our way to the meeting point (they always seemed a bit chaotic to me which I guess is no surprise when you have around 1,500 people trying to figure out where they are going) and were lead through the port and accompanying shops to our ATVs and guide, Willy (who looked like Cesar Milan).

10:14 p.m.

Monday
At Sea

It took us a while to get our sea legs and this first complete day at sea certainly did not help.  The ship started roughly rocking almost as soon as we hit the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night.  Every now and then the boat would pitch to the side.  I never really lost my balance, per se, rather I’d find myself holding just a bit tighter to the rails along the hallway.  We spent most of the day checking out the ship and all it had to offer.  We read the daily letting us know everything going on for the day and decided to head up to the forward part of the ship to sign up for Friday night’s murder mystery dinner.  They only had room for 60 so we made sure to get up there in plenty of time.  As we were signing up we noticed they were getting ready to start a session of bingo.  It had been a while since we played, so we decided to stick around.  We both ended up winning a game each!  I won first – ha! (and they call B the lucky one) Unfortunately I had to split the $115 price with four other people ($23 for those doing the math).  No matter, I was still excited to win. Not to be outdone, B won the next round.  By himself. $130. Jerk.  The final game, he came very close to winning again.  The person calling the numbers told him to sit down and let someone else win for a change.

March 6, 2009

Tent City

-M

8:41 p.m.

Sunday
New Orleans

Neither one of us slept well.  Both of us use two pillows at night and we only had 2 in the room.  We tried to get more but the hotel was out of extras.  The bed was hard and we were (or at least I was) several times throughout the night to partiers on the street and in the hotel. Clearly our trip was getting off to a slow start.  We had a tour of New Orleans scheduled for 9:30 but we were slow moving and thwarted by a wonderful Southern downpour.  We decided to beg off of the tour.  We had a room service breakfast (real grits!!) and went on a short walk around the French Quarter (essentially around St. Louis Cathedral).  We came back to the room, packed and waited to head to the port.  You can arrive by 11:00 but they don’t let people on the ship until noon.

12:03 p.m.

Since it would be next to impossible for me to talk about my vacation in a concise (and eloquent) manner, I thought I would write multiple mind-numbing posts for your enjoyment.

You can thank me later.

Saturday
Travel/New Orleans 

I hate travel days.  You always wake up before the butt crack of dawn and then spend a good chunk of day travelling. It’s exhausting, but usually worth it in the end. The first thing we noticed when we get to New Orleans is that the airport is dead.  It’s 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday (a few weeks before Mardi Gras) and no one is in the airport.  Our hotel is in the heart of the French Quarter on the corner of Bourbon Street and Orleans Avenue (Bourbon Orleans Hotel, naturally).  Our first impression of Nola is: depressed.  I was expecting it to be similar to downtown Charleston, but it wasn’t at all. Brad and I joked about all of the billboards for sex shops and strip clubs along the route from the airport to the FQ.  Our cab driver was very quiet but did point out a few of the areas hit by the flood after Hurricane Katrina.