catching up

It was inevitable... send me on vacation for a week and boom, I've forgotten my blog. Thankfully it's only been two weeks.

So, catching up!

I spent a week down in the beautiful Carribean. We stayed at the Lago Mar, which I hear is frequented by celebrities, in Fort Lauderdale for three days before sailing day for the cruise. The beaches were absolutely gorgeous, so we got to do lots of swimming and sunning (and getting sunburned, I got a really bad one on my shoulders) and enjoying the beautiful hotel. There was even a life-size chess board, so Jon and I played one-on-one wizard chess. I beat the crap out of him. It was amazing. Tee-hee!


Wizard chess!

On the last night we were at Lago Mar, Nana, Auntie, Ali, Mom, and I ate in the little diner next to the pool, and it was so cute! It was exactly like the diners you see in movies, with the high stools and counters and the black and white checker floor. And the waitress was so funny, she had blond hair in an updo and long pink nails just like movies. The cuteness of it all was kinda ruined when poor Auntie had rancid cheese in her veggie wrap, though. Oh well, nothing's perfect.

Our cruise was supposed to go to the Keys and Cazumel, Mexico, but Hurricane Charley had other plans. We ended up going east instead, to Coco Cay and Nassau in the Bahamas.

The day we got on the boat kinda sucked, because we only had one car for twelve people AND all our luggage, so we had to make two trips to the port. I went on the first trip, so I had to sit around on the ground with my luggage in the dirty great sun for almost an hour while everyone else got there. It was really smelly and it was at least 95 degrees out. I ended up getting so bored I braided a bracelet out of shreds of palm leaves (yeah, count on them to have great landscaping and no bloody benches). So finally, the rest of the gang got there, and we got to go through four waves of security before we got to get on the boat! Sounds fun, eh?

Well, at least we got on the boat before 4 in the afternoon, so it was pretty good considering the sheer amount of people and luggage we had to account for (and if you know Nana, you know we had a headcount every five seconds ^^). Still, it sucked. Either way, it was completely worth it because the boat was AMAZING. You always hear about it from people from people who go on cruises, but you don't experience just how glamourous it really is until you're actually there. Then, of course, all the sense of glitz fades when you see your stateroom. :-P Count on my very frugal family to get the teeny-tiny budget rooms! ^_^ Our whole bathroom was about half the size of a typical public bathroom stall, it was ridiculous. Understandable, since we were on a boat, after all, but still ridiculous. Take that, and then try to fit all the clothes of four girls (it was my cousins and me in the room) into the six little drawers we got. Luckily we had Martha Stewart's friendly clone, Ali, to organize everything! :-P

The most fun part was finding out about the millions of age restrictions on the activities available (or should I say 'unavailable') on the ship. For all practical purposes I was 15, but since we boarded on the 12th I was still three days' shy of my technical birthday. So lucky me, I got to go to the 12-14 year old age group's activities. Needless to say, I didn't even bother. It wouldn't have mattered if they'd let me into the 15-17 year old activities, because it was practically the same thing. Anything that was half-decent besides eating and seeing the shows (but wait kids, if you're under 16 you gotta sit by Mom or Dad! *rolls eyes*) and swimming was off-limits to anyone under 18. I hate being a kid. I don't enjoy having the 'teen staff' think that my idea of having fun is sitting around with stupid people, eating pizza and listening to Britney Spears.

Don't get me wrong, I still had a lot of fun, but it was really frustrating just trying to find stuff to do. I'm really glad I had all my cousins around because there were definitely a lot of boring moments. Emily and Carly ended up going off to meet boys (*rolls eyes again*), and Jon was often either with them or with Andrew, so Ali and I spent a lot of time together.

I enjoyed the cruise, but next time I definitely want to go after I'm old enough to actually be able to go to stuff. The only impression I got of any of the kids' stuff was 'hey, parents, you can dump your kids here and go have fun!' Pffft.

Airport day sure was a blast too! We got off the boat and had everyone at the airport by 9:30 a.m. Oh goody, our flight doesn't leave until 4 p.m.! ;_;

Yay for family vacations!