16:18 12/3/2001
Today almost started out with a disaster... but more on that later.
Karen and I both got a good night's sleep... I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I kinda remember getting up once to go to the bathroom. The alarm clock furnished by the hotel didn't work, but Karen said that she'd get up on time, and she did. .
We went downstairs to the continental breakfast and met another couple while we were down there and asked them if they wanted to walk along the beach with us. They mentioned that they'd neglected to bring their sunglasses, and this reminded Karen that she'd left hers in the room. I volunteered to go up and get them, but I searched the room in vain. I looked briefly for her purse, but I didn't see it so I thought that she had it with her.
I went back down and we went for our walk and we were walking out onto a rock pier when I figgered out what had been bothering me... when I went back up to the room, it had been unlocked and slightly ajar.
And then I realized that Karen wasn't carrying her purse...
I told Karen that I had found the door unlocked... I didn't want to worry about this all by myself, after all.
Our boarding tickets for the cruise and all of her identification were in her purse, of course.
We said goodby to the other couple and headed for our room. We found everything in order, her purse was mostly hidden by a flap on a suitcase.
So we lucked out yet again.
We all boarded the bus again for the short trip over to the docks... went through the boarding procedure, and got on the boat.
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I'm having a hard time just believing that this boat is this big... and that it moves, too! And that it's the smallest boat in Carvival's fleet. In fact, I'm just about fascinated with every aspect of this trip.
We need to go get ready for our first dinner... we had an excellent lunch after we arrived and before the lifeboat drill... which was a royal pain. There's always some jackass, or in this case multiple jackasses, who don't feel that they need to comply with the rules. If it were possible, these jackasses would be stoned and hung up as an example for other transgressors against the common good... yeah, they held things up a little....
23:44..
Dinner was wonderful. I had steak and it was just a tad too done, but otherwise pretty excellent. And I had the decadent chocolate for dessert... and half of Kim's too. Along with hot chocolate.
Then Karen and I wandered around... a lot. Lots of stuff to do here, and no way to do it all. Listened to some very good jazz, but mostly just wandered around and people-watched. It's more than a bit chilly on deck, and the wind is pretty bad too, but I think that the wind is mostly from our speed... it seems like we're going 60MPH, but I'm pretty sure that it's only about half of that. Still pretty damned fast for such a large thing.
There was a show in the theater at 22:30 that we wanted to see, but we got there a little early... we looked around to see who we knew and saw the same couple that we'd gone for a walk with this morning, so we sat with them. Shortly after we sat down, Kim came down and let us know that she and Matt were up in the balcony above us.
Well, they were playing bingo, and we were afraid that it was going to go on and on, but someone finally won... and a few minutes later, Matt came down and showed us the cash. Yep, he'd won $250 playing bingo!
After the show, I convinced Karen that it was, indeed, time to give it up... my body couldn't take it any more. So we finally came down to our room. We can feel the engine pretty well, I think that that'll out me right to sleep...