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The Kalisiaks' Journal
So yes, nearly at the end of our saga. And in the typical fashion of this trip, even getting from the Syracuse airport back to the Wyndham to get our van didn't go as planned. Got to the airport just fine, found our luggage, went out to the shuttle - and it's full. So Wyndham paid for a cab for us to get back to the hotel.
But hey, the van started, and we're on the way home.
100 miles left back to Buffalo, both the kids are asleep, and I won't say anything else until we pull in the driveway for fear of something else happening. :*D
Current mood:
exhausted.
Finally made it to the airport today, figured we were all set to finally get home. Lo and behold, the plane coming into Ft. Lauderdale is delayed, and if we had taken it, we woud have missed our connection in Cinn. and not made it to Syracuse until tomorrow! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
So, instead, we've been re-routed agan and here's our latest flight information:
Flight 197 leaving FLL at 3:45, arriving in Atlanta at 5:39
Flight 1070 leaving Atlanta at 8:16, arriving in Syracuse at 10:25 pm.
So, we won't be home until after midnight, and someone will have to take care of the cats again. *sigh*
Current mood:
tired.
More pictures have been added... Probably the last batch from the cruise itself...
All our flights have been changed.
Didn't stay at any of the hotels that I booked months ago.
OK, we did get on the ship. That was the big one. But we didn't go to Grand Cayman (no biggie) and well, there's these two extra days...
I did get my hammock in Cozumel, but we didn't go to Paradise Beach or Carlos & Charlies.
Costa Maya...heh, yes, well. I can finally sleep on my back now. :^D
Never really expected much from Ocho Rios - but y'know, since then we've been seeing a *lot* more people with wrist/ankle injuries.
But anyway, tomorrow for sure we are docking in Miami and will debark the ship (not disembark as Chris and I both keep saying, lol). Chris' dad was able to change our flights for us to Tuesday (thank you!!) so we won't be home until Tuesday night.
Tuesday: flight 639 @12:45 into Cincy, then 5402 @4:10 into Syracuse, landing @5:45.
Yeah, like that's a bad thing...
(Bear with me on this blurty update; I've had about 4 hours of sleep, but wanted to make sure that everyone was kept abreast of the status.)
The synopsis of the last 8 hours or so is an announcement was made at about 9 or 9:30 last night saying that, after careful consideration of all available information, the ship was going to race to the port of Miami to beat Jeanne -- we've been travelling at pretty close to top speed (20.3-20.5 knots, whatever that translates to in land speed) since some time yesterday. The problem is that the port was expected to close early in the afternoon, so the ship was supposed to immediately head back out to sea, even before the passengers fully disembarked. So, the disembarkation schedule was shifted back by like two hours...
Brief overview of the disemabarkation process. At time zero (normally 7 or 7:30, I believe), US citizens who can carry all of their own luggage are allowed to disembark on an accelerated schedule. Then one hour later the accelerated disembarkation stops, and immigration begins. At this point, everyone that's left on the ship is in a holding pattern while non-US citizens are processed, which usually takes about an hour, but allegedly some pokey Canucks in the past have held up the show while Carnival employees hunted them down. So, anyway, after immigration is complete, then normal disembarkation can begin. In the normal disembarkation, you set out your luggage the night before, and passengers are called in the morning, after immigration, on a per-deck basis. You say you don't have anything interesting to declare, leave the ship, find your luggage, and you're on your way. If you don't have a morning flight, or if you're just a morning person in general, the accelerated disembarkation lets you off early before everyone else. But if you're not a morning person (hand shoots up into the air), then you can stick around on the ship, have some breakfast, put together some food to take with you for later in the day, and just take a more leisurely pace in general.
The hurricane threw a few wrenches in those works...
To make matters worse, not only were we going to be shifting the accelerated disembarkation to the 5:30 to 6:30 block, but there were expected to be a number of other ships a tiny bit later in the morning that were going to try to quickly dump their passengers onto the pier so the ships could then flee back out to sea. So, the choices at hand were either to disembark with all of our luggage under our arms at 5:30 to 6:30 (sunrise is at 7:19AM, by the way), or to wait until 7:30 or 8AM to try to figure out where our eight pieces of luggage are, in the huge mass of people at the pier that had been expected to arrive. Either way, we'd need transportation to Fort Lauderdale, so it would probably be safest to get to the pier as soon as possible in this case to make sure we can get out of Miami before the hurricane hits. All this with a 4-year-old and a 6.5-year old in tow, that have never before in their lives gotten up this early.
Suffice it to say, the tone last night while finishing packing (we did 90% of the packing during the day yesterday) was rather somber... Heather wasn't figuring on going to sleep (but it's just as well she did anyway), and I set a wake-up call for 4:30.
I woke up at about 4AM, and noticed that we were still travelling at top speed, but the seas were very rough. The ship's stabilizers are interesting. You can't really tell that we were plowing through huge waves, but for the last 8 hours you could feel the ship rocking from side-to-side. I guess it's probably the prevailing westerlies trying to knock the ship over as we travelled north, but that's just a guess on my part. Anyway... I called down to the front desk to ask what the status is, and even though we were still racing toward Miami, we were still due to disembark in an hour-and-a-half.
So, I started to take a shower, dreading waking the kids up in an hour, but we had to do what we had to do. While in the shower, I heard the PA system announcement tone, and heard a voice conveying a message, but the speaker is in the stateroom and I had the water running, so I couldn't make out the details. I knew that Heather would hear it, so I just continued what I was doing. A moment later I felt the ship make a hard turn, and Heather informed me that the port of Miami had been closed, and that we were heading back out to sea...
I was already awake (but I hope I can fall back asleep at this point for a few hours), so I decided to grab a bite of breakfast (the breakfast buffet opened at 4AM this morning) and post an update to the blurty... I came up on deck, to the 12th floor, to check to see if we were close enough to Miami to pick up a cell signal, but no luck. I picked up a couple signals from other providers, but not T-Mobile. It was mildly amusing to see the hundred or so people wandering around the deck looking for a signal at this hour of the morning...
While eating my breakfast, I spoke with a couple women that are part of the 200-something geneology group, and they noted that their flights had been cancelled as of like 1 or 2AM this morning, so it's just as well that the ship head back out to sea, or there would be a lot of people stuck in Florida with no way out. I shudder to think of having two half-awake children with no adequate transportation from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, with a hurricane bearing down at us...
Anyway, not sure what the next 24-48 hours has in store for us. We're not doing much of anything until the port opens. We were fortunate enough to have booked our flights to and from Florida with a couple days slop, which has paid off it looks like. The flight down to Floriday was delayed by a day due to Ivan, and now with Jeanne making a mess of things, it's a good thing we're not supposed to be flying back until Monday.
We're going to need someone to call and confirm the hotel reservations for us, since the delay on Thursday ended up resulting in a cancelled hotel room (good thing we checked when we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, and rebooked another hotel), so our hotel reservations in Fort Lauderdale are presumably in jeapordy. I'll convey this information to someone a little later today.
Err... Good night?
Current mood:
stressed.
Including the gala buffet....
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Anyway, Ocho Rios today. Left the kids on board and just walked around a little, spent some time at the Island Village right off the pier. Stopped by at Margaritaville - mostly because they handed out "Free Shot" coupons out front - and ordered what ended up being a HUUUGE platter of nachos. We couldn't finish them all. Hung out for a while down at the bar and yes, once again the red ponytails caught someone's attention and the DJ ended up pouring a shot for me. Sans shot glass. :^0 Bought some rum, skipped on the Blue Mountain coffee - why pay $18/lb when we buy Costa Rican coffee at home for $9/lb? - and got back on board. It was hot and sunny, a combination that made my sunburned back painful, and we hadn't planned on doing anything in Jamaica anyway - the big thing is Dunns River Falls, and that just didn't appeal to us.
Came back and took a nap while Chris wandered around the ship and took some photos. Picked up the kids from Camp in time to get ready for dinner. Second formal night tonight, but even after Talia was dressed in her little Chinese dress, she wanted to go eat with the other kids at camp. Sigh. So, the three of us went and had dinner without her. It still amazes me that this entire week, there has been *no one* in our section of the restaurant! There's a table for 8 next to us, and two booths for 4 behind us - and no one has been in any of them all week...
After dinner we went and watched the magic show, which was very good. Stephen was mad because he was never called on stage, but other than that he really liked it. They offered a CD/DVD of the show for $5 which we did get - it's mostly music clips of the songs they used and about 5 minutes of actual footage, but what do you want for $5? After the show Stephen had his picture taken with one of the magicians and his python. He says his favorite part of the magic show was the Cage of Death. How typical, lol.
Right now Talia's asleep, and Chris and Stephen just went downstairs to check out the Grand Buffet. Another day at sea tomorrow, and then we are back in port. It seems anticlimatic to have a day at sea before ending the cruise, but I may just need that long to get everything re-packed.
A couple more pictures have been added...
Carnival always offers many different options for shore excursions, all of which are marked up so that Carnival can get their share. One of these was a Jungle Beach Break, which allowed for some time at a beach (with open bar) - at $39/person. With the kids in tow, it just wasn't worth it.
Now I had known beforehand that we were going to Costa Maya instead of Grand Cayman, so I had done a little bit of research and had found a different all-inclusive at Pez Quadro for $25/adults and $15/kids. Hmm. $156 to be herded with several hundred other people to a beach, or $80 to strike it out on our own.
OK, so the bus we took to "downtown" Costa Maya was in desparate need of a good cleaning, and "downtown" consisted of a sand road and a ton of tourist traps all selling the same things - silver jewelry, blankets, carved bone statues, and snorkeling tours - but Pez Quadro. Ohhhh, Pez Quadro.
They barely speak English - had a bit of difficulty trying to find a "changing room" until Chris said "cambio" and worked to bathroom from there (should have asked some variation on "uno ban~o para cambio" and we would have gotten a bit further) and the light dawned on what we were looking for - but the water was warm, clear, and nearly all our own. They had two kayak excursions show up while we were there, and maybe another half dozen people showed up on their own - half from our ship and the other half from the Holland America's Zuiderdam (which had followed us from Cozumel) but that was it. Pez Quadro is near the end of "downtown" so I can understand why there were fewer people.
We had ordered two plates of nachos/quesadillas with the package (at a total cost of $10 extra) and we had those very tasty items for lunch. Stephen was happy - he had a Coke. Mommie and Daddy had a bit more than just a Coke. Sorry, can't tell you more - what happens in Pez Quadro stays in Pez Quadro. :^D
The pictures Chris posted show how beautiful that beach is. The kids were giving me "spa treatments" all afternoon - taking wet sand off the bottom and scrubbing my back. Unfortunately, the "spa treatments" also washed off my sunscreen, and my back is pretty sunburned today.
Pez Quadro is right next to one of the primary schools there, and after school let out two young girls canvassed the beach selling bracelets they had made. Talia and I each bought one - and even today Talia was telling me about the girls that sold them to us "so they could eat food". Now I'm hardly the first person to say that a cruise is an educational experience, but I'm hoping that at the least, the kids will realize that there are people in this world who don't live like we are fortunate enough to be able to.
Talia also didn't like that there were stray dogs everywhere, and at one point she wanted to take that one dog home. Chris had bought her a bag of popcorn from a man that was walking down the street, and that's what she's feeding the puppy in that one picture.
But anyway, the kids managed to get us to a taxi and back to the ship before she set sail. :^D
Today we were (recovering, haha) at sea, and the ship has really been booking to Ocho Rios, Jamacia, and I can really tell. The ship has been rocking back and forth all day and I can NOT wait to get to port! The rocking is annoying, especially when I'm sitting down (like right now). I wouldn't say I've been seasick - except one night earlier when Talia woke me up and I had to crawl into the bathroom to find the ginger tablets - but I can really tell that we're moving. According to what the Captain said earlier in an announcement, we're going at about 19 nautical miles/hour, and I know the ship's top speed is 21, so we're not exactly crawling.
Today was the tour of the ship's galley - pics are already up - and really, the tour itself was boring. The tours they show on the Travel Channel give more detail - and no, I didn't ask where the "banana cooler" (ie morgue) is. The highlight was meeting our new Japanese friends, who took a liking to Talia and gave her a monchichi phone charm and an origami crane. Talia was being her usual stubborn self and didn't want to have them take her picture - then she did - then she didn't - then she did. *rolling my eyes* Chris ran upstairs to get Stephen and his postcards and he gave one to them. Later this evening, when Chris and I were wandering around in the casino, we met up with them again and the one lady handed me two tiny cranes - one in pink paper and one in blue. I'l be sure to save these for the kids for when they are older.
The kids ate dinner with Camp tonight. Talia loves going to camp - Stephen prefers to stay in the room and play with his Game Boy or his Legos. I've been giving him a bit of freedom to come up here on his own and he's been great. He does, however, like to go with Camp to see the Vegas-style shows, and he's looking forward to the magic show tomorrow night.
So Chris and I had dinner alone tonight in our dining room. I think Beatrice (our assistant waitperson) was disappointed that the kids were not there - she likes trying to convince Talia to let her have her dessert. She brings us our bread (and tries to bring us more), fills our water glasses, and gets Chris' double espresso and my cappuccino after dinner. Joshua is our main waiter and he takes good care of us. The Maitre'D has stopped by every night and tonight he mentioned that we were "lonely" 'cause the kids were gone, and I said NOOOOOO, lol. He laughed. :^D
We picked up the kids at 10 from Camp and Talia was really mad 'cause she wanted to finish watching whatever movie it was. She finally conked out at about 11 in the room, after she took a shower. Now Stephen is finishing up his burrito from room service and I'm just about ready to try to find a comfortable position to sleep in. That is, if the Captain stops hitting all the bumps on this stupid ocean!
Jamacia on Thursday, mon!
:^*
H.
Including some of our new Japanese friends. :-)
We arrived at the pier on Saturday around 11:30 am, and had to navigate through all those poor people they had just forced on the ship. The lines weren't bad - I don't think we waited more than 10 minutes in the main line to check in. There were several lines - first the metal detectors, then the main check-in where we presented our tickets and set up the Sail & Sign, then up some stairs to pick up the actual S&S cards, and then into the holding area.
Now let's face it - I have red highlights in my hair and I wear pigtails a good part of the time, so I'm pretty easy to pick out. And Terry (Beerman from Cruise Critic) did just that as we were walking into the waiting area. Which was cool, because they were towards the front of that area, so we were able to board nearly right after the wedding parties did.
We set foot on board *lliterally* at 12:00 noon.
The ship is beautiful - and actually much smaller than I thought it would be. I had to get used to the ceilings - they seem very low, even in the public areas. The second floors of the London dining room bisects deck 4, and to get around it you have to go up to 5 and then back down - which, in my eyes, is a design flaw, but there's probably some arcane reason for it.
OK, let me get this bit over with now. There are several reports of stained carpets on the Triumph. Now that I'm here, I can say with all certainty, that if there are stains on the carpets, they're not as bad as the ones on our carpets at home.
We're on the Spa deck (deck 11) in what is considered a "Family stateroom" - which has a floor to ceiling, slanted window. Great view most of the time, but when the sun's on that side, it heats up the room quite a bit.
Now there's one big issue with the ship - temperature control. There are isolated parts of the ship that are *freezing*, and others where they could really crank up the A/C. And then there's the outside - it's HOT out there! Yeah, yeah, I know, we're in the Caribbean, just call it a blond moment. :^D
OK, back to the room. Sleeps 4 - the bunk actually comes out of the ceiling instead of the wall like I'd seen in pictures. It's small, but larger than I'd expected. Could use more counter space. Stephen's in the bunk,and every night he ends up with one of his legs sticking out the rail into space, and he kicks the rail all night. Our bed is two bunks pushed together into a king, and while I can find the seam, it hasn't been an issue.
Didn't do much Saturday night, as we were all pretty tired out from all that stupid traveling. We did go to the sign-up for Camp Carnival and signed up both of the kids. Went to bed early so we were rested for our first day at sea.
On Sunday we were at sea. The kids went to camp most of the day, except for lunch, which we ate at the South Beach Club (the main buffet). Every day they feature a separate cuisine in one part, and Sunday it was Indian. Yum, yum, yum. And yum again. :^)
Met up with my Cruise Critic friends at 1 and Stephen traded his postcards. Then at 2 I went to go get my hair done, since Sunday was the first Formal Night. 61 bobby pins later, I looked like I had wires sticking out of my head. :^D Chris posted a few pics. We did get a *ton* of pictures taken on our way to the Captain's Reception. I had ordered Talia a single pink rose to go with her dress, which they delivered to our room. Between her gown, her crown and the flower, she decided that her new name is "Talia, Princess of the Flowers of the World."
Heh heh, I had apparently forgotten to mention to Chris that there are free beverages at the Captain's Reception. And they were being very generous with them. I think Chris must have had 5 martinis and at least one Manhattan (because they had temporarily run out of martinis). And this was another place where my time at Cruise Critic paid off - because after 2 very sorry excuses for whisky sours, Chris went to the bar and got me a pina colada.
Ok, this is a prime example of me being bad. I finished the pina colada and had set the empty glass aside. One of the waiters came by and offered to get me another - but his tray was full so he couldn't take the glass. After he left, another waiter came by and took the empty glass, asking me what what had been in it. Then Stephen caught his sleeve on his punch and dumped it, so he and Chris went up to the bar to get him another drink. So Talia and I are sitting there and yup, you guessed it, here comes one waiter with one drink, the second with another, and Chris with a thrid for me. Heh heh heh. Thank you, Captain Pagano. :^)
Formal night means Prime Rib and Lobster, and I readily admitted to our wait staff that tonight I was going to be a glutton and order 2 lobster tails and one prime rib. Then Talia decided that she didn't like the lobster and she just wanted everyone's mushroom risotto. Oh darn, had to eat her lobster tail too. :^0 Such hardships.
The kids went to the slumber party on Sunday night, and honestly I don't think they'll go back. I don't think they got enough sleep - and to boot, they both had chocolate milk - so we really paid for it today. And really, I don't know if we need to send them again. The disco was disappointing, I only spent $20 in the casino, and there wasn't much else going on. We did stop at the coffee bar - that was a nice surprise. Yes, there is a surcharge for the coffees and desserts, but the cheesecake is $2/slice and the coffee prices were cheaper than the grocery store. I spend more at Borders.
Today we were docked at Cozumel. My goal was a bottle of vanilla and a family sized hammock. I had already done my research on the hammock - knew I wanted nylon and one with a higher string count. Chris and I left the kids at the playroom and walked around right at the pier for a while and then took a cab to downtown for $6. The farther away from downtown you walk, the cheaper the prices get. I found a hammock I wanted and paid $80 for it (after negotiating from $100), which I'm happy with. It's huge and very heavy (I know, I had to carry it, LOL!). Went to another store for vanilla and they had 3 or 4 different types. I asked her what type she uses and bought that one. Got caught in the rain, took a cab back to the ship, and had lunch. Today was Japanese, so Chris got his sushi. :^)
Came back to the room, and got into our suits to go swimming. Eww. Salt water pools. The main pools were too deep for the kids, so we went up to deck 12 and stayed in the kiddie pool for a while. Sure, it's only a foot deep, but it was deserted and it had a shower that sprayed right into the pool, which the kids had fun with. The ship was deserted and we had that entire deck to ourselves.
Rest of the evening was uneventful. Came back to the room, got dressed, tried to take a nap, went to dinner. Stephen was bored with dinner so I gave him my room key and he came up to the room to play his GameBoy. After dinner Talia made a beeline for the playroom, so at about quarter to 8 the rest of us went down into the port area so Stephen could look around.
8 pm and we're haggling the price of a wooden snake Stephen wants, when I realize I'm being bitten on the legs by about ten million mosquitos. Quick, settle on a price for that thing so we can get out of here.
So, now it's 10 pm and we're just being pushed away from the port. Talia is already conked out - she fell asleep in the playroom, and once again I was grateful to the Upgrade Fairy who assigned us a room literally 8 feet away from Camp Carnival. Tonight's the Mexican Buffet at 11:30 and I don't know if I'm going to be awake that long. This vacationing thing is tiring. :^0
:^*
H.
ps oh yeah, the dog - Chelsea is fed at the same time as the cats, because if there is extra dog food around, Stimpy will eat it. Chelsea won't even touch her food until Stimpy is let out of her crate, but she'll start eating as soon as Stimpy makes a move for it. Stimpy cannot be allowed to eat Chelsea's food, however, given the dietary restrictions that Stimpy is on.