The Cruise Life

Hello my friends and happy Monday night! As I promised, here is a quick post about the actual cruise.  The Harbor House is where the four of us stayed the Friday night before we boarded. It's a nice hotel, but much more expensive than we would normally spend. However, the cost was for the convenience to the actual cruise terminal. We walked less than a block before entering the terminal. To save on the cost, the four of us shared a room with two queen size beds. Good thing we've been friends for over 30 years! I detest pictures of myself so I'm going to pretend I don't see myself. :-)

The front of our ship. The Carnival Jubilee. It is a gorgeous ship. We were the 4th cruise of it's life.

Here's a bit better photo of the entire ship, (almost). It is huge and can carry about 6400 passengers and 1800 crew. We had over 5800 passengers plus crew on our cruise. Look at that gorgeous sky. We didn't see much of that on our trip! The guys ran our luggage over to the ship around 9:00 am and then we drove to the other side of the island and did some sight-seeing and had lunch before boarding at about 1:00.  We ended up leaving port around 5:00 pm.

After boarding, we visited our muster station and learned how to use life vests and where to go for our lifeboat if necessary. By then it was announced that we could go to our cabins whenever we wanted so we went to see the cabin and drop off our carry-on bags. We never, ever check our medications, jewelry, important documents, money, etc. We always carry them with us onto a plane and now the ship too. There is a safe in each cabin and we were grateful to use it for our valuables. You put your own combination in and only three people on the ship can override it. The Captain, The Head of Resort Services and one other that I can't remember now, so we felt it was a safe place to put things.

Then we went exploring this huge ship. That took days to visit everything.

The theme on the Jubilee is the boardwalk and under the sea. This art fixure is so beautiful and three stories tall of fish swimming in circles. At night it's lit up and looks as though the fish are alive. Dennis looks pretty happy and relaxed. We had such a great time.

This was part of the under the sea portion. We spent several evenings here listening to Jeffrey Michaels,  a country music singer. You can see a few people dancing in the walkway. There was always someone out there dancing when music was being played. The screens up above are underwater scenes that change constantly. 

Closer view of Jeffrey Michaels. He sang the older country songs from when we were younger. George Strait, Conway Twitty, a little Elvis, etc. We really enjoyed him and another 6 person group called the "Backyard Band". They sang 50's. 60's, 70's music. There was also a violin trio that we saw several times. There were a lot of comedy clubs, bands, games, and shows that we never had the opportunity to see. Some, we didn’t want to see and some, we just ran out of time.

The bar was Dr. Inks PhD, or "Drinks". We're not drinkers but we could get soda or water there too.

Here's a small view of the back, or aft, part of the Lido deck. As you can see by the flag, it was really windy.  It was beginning to get stormy too. You would see people staggering all over the ship as we were tossed to and fro on the waves. There was quite a lot of movement for such a big ship! At one point the four of us were walking down a corridor, and we all took a step to the right at the same time as the ship tilted. A lady coming toward us did the same thing. She told us that they call that the cruise waltz! 

We had lots of storms and a rocky ship all week but it didn't bother us a bit.

Jenny snuck this photo of Dennis and I sitting outside on our cove balcony the only day we had a little bit of sunshine all week.

The next two photos are of our cabin. We didn't watch the TV very much. Usually we just checked the weather for the day and the ships itinerary to see if it had changed. We had a refrigerator and a sofa bed.

At this end of the room are the closests on the right with the safe. Lots of closets and drawer space. We unpacked all of our clothes and didn't use even a fourth of the space! On the left in the photo is the bathroom and the door to the hall. I should have taken a photo of the bathroom, but take my word for it, it's tiny. The room was great though and more than sufficient for our needs. We were only in there to sleep anyway. We were too busy roaming the ship to just sit in the room.

Every day our cabin steward made us a new towel animal and the last day he made us a heart with a thank you note. I kept them all lined up on the countertop by the mirror. This was one of my favorite things about the cruise. I loved coming in and being surprised by what he made every day. Aren't they so cute? And even the eyes!

Here's the sun getting ready to set the first day off our balcony.

This was a beautiful rendition of the Jubilee on one of the main walls. Neal and Jenny took a great photo in front of it.

This was also the Lido deck in the buffet area. Almost every afternoon we spent a few hours here playing dominoes with Neal and Jenny. We always played dominoes together in Spokane for date night. We would go out to dinner and then end up at our house to play dominoes. We have really missed it. Here we are with Jenny, her brother Matthias and his wife. The cruise was to celebrate Matt’s 50 birthday. They cruise a LOT.

We had such a great time. As I think I said before, I didn't leave the ship once all week. It was rainy at both Cozumel and Rhoatan and we had to skip Costa Maya because the seas were too rough to dock the ship. I didn't mind. I'd been there before and Dennis and I both enjoy the ship when it's not as crowded. Dennis and Neal did get off at Cozumel and went to one of the port shops to get vanilla for Jenny. They came back and found us in the Center Stage area. I was knitting and Jenny and I were visiting. They were soaked! I bought vanilla last time I was here and still have half a bottle. It's the BEST vanilla for not much money.

One night we ate in the dining room and one evening we ate at a specialty restaurant that served both asian and mexican cusine. We had Guy's Burgers outside on the Lido one day and pizza from the Summer Landing area. Now THAT was good pizza. Otherwise we found ourselves at the buffet most of the time so we could each get whatever we wanted. They made too order eggs and omelets every morning and so much other food every meal. And snacks. Everywhere there were snacks. No wonder we both gained 5 lbs.! I have to lose that before we cruise again!

The weather and rough seas definitely didn't deter either Dennis or I from wanting to cruise again. He wants to book something now! That's a surprise because I really didn't know if he would like it. 

I hope I didn't bore you too much. I really didn't take a lot of photos. I just didn't think about it. We were having too much fun playing on the ship. Even with so many people on it, it didn't seem crowded at all. 

I'll be back again with just a few photos of our trip home and then it's back to normal life. I don't know what's happening this last week! I've had to make my own bed, cook, wash dishes and do laundry. What happened!?

Blessings and love,
Betsy