At Sea!

After chasing down one last fountain Dr. Pepper for me, Brad and I got to the Galveston port at noon. On a side note, I still don't understand how a cruise line expects to sail out of Texas and not serve Dr. Pepper. The airlines have all figured it out...why can't Carnival? But back to cruising. We lined up, filled out our health surveys, looked around to see if anyone looked suspiciously sick, (noticed people carrying on 12 packs of Dr. Pepper...smart, very smart), got our boarding passes and then walked onboard to begin our journey.

After exploring the ship and grabbing a bite to eat, I took Brad to the cabin that would be our home for the next week...all 150 square feet of it. He took it surprisingly well! I'm pretty sure he rationalized that it was like being on a European vacation, but whatever works! We unpacked, bumped into each other a few times and then made up first trek up the flights of stairs for our evacutation drill. I felt left out. My life vest didn't have the cool blinking light on it for in case I was floating in the Gulf waiting to be rescued. I tried to rationalize that the sharks wouldn't be able to see me either, but somehow it didn't provide much comfort. At least I had the super clean, brand spanking new, non swine flu and other cooties life vest. And yes, that is the lovely port of Galveston behind me. Ah, the smell of diesel is a great way to start a tropical vacation.

The rest of the day passed as pretty much any cruise vacation would...super stout drinks of the day with little umbrellas, a few dollars spent at penny slots, watching the ship pull out, enjoying 5:00 sushi, picking out an excursion, and pretty much packing in as much activity as you possibly can in a few hours. Dinner offered a small surprise though. I had mentioned to the booking agent that it was our anniversary trip. That night at dinner, all the waiters on our side of ship gathered round, sang Happy Anniversay to the tune of Happy Birthday, made us kiss in front of everyone, and presented us with the first of many, many, many deserts. We're not entirely sure what it was, but it wasn't half bad.

Finally we called it a night and met our first towel creature. I think it was a walrus.