Tony and Lilian's 50th Anniversary Cruise 2016

- Friday July 1st - 

There is always a story before you leave on vacation, usually it's you woke up had a nice breakfast and then take your time in getting to the airport... not me.  I like to play it dangerous (not usually on purpose) and this time was probably my best attempt to miss a flight.  A bit of back story, if you don't know I am a huge home theater fan and I have a decent setup nothing too outrageous but a few days before the trip my subwoofer went out.  Oh I was sad but of course I was going to fix it, repair it or replace it, and I was going to do that after we got back from vacation but a 2 day sale happened at Fry's.  It was a deep discount on one of the subwoofers I was actually considering and I couldn't let this pass.  Problem with the deal was I HAD to pick it up Friday or Saturday, but of course I was going to be gone on Saturday.  I left work a bit later than I wanted to, you know, trying to be a good employee and work that 3/4 day so that I don't have to use vacation time.  Around 1:00, I rolled out of the office and headed towards the electronics store and like most things in Houston it was of course 30 minutes away (further from the house, where Rebe was waiting).  I had placed the order online so it was SUPPOSED to be a quick in and out but they weren't ready, so my planned 10 minutes in the store had turned into 30....

...the reason(s) I was running a bit late ;)

It's now 2pm and our flight leaves at 4:15pm, with an expected 30 minutes back to the house (if I'm lucky) and then another 30 minutes to the airport.  I get in my car and Houston's fantastic traffic had already cranked up and stifled my attempt to get home in 30 min.  We had smartly packed the night before, because what travel professional doesn't, and we packed the car in 2 minutes and then were back out on our way to the airport.  Surprisingly traffic en route to the airport was 'normal' and we made it to the airport about an hour before the flight was to take off.

Flight was uneventful, we got to Orlando and Rebe's parents, Tony and Lilian, picked us up to provide us a ride to their house and Rebe's mom cooked pollo empanizado (breaded chicken, my request this time) and it was world class.  Rebe has been hiding this secret of making requests for food when we go to Orlando, I'm gonna have to step my game up.

- Saturday July 2nd- 

Up at a decent hour, but never early enough for the ever-ready Tony.  Tony had packed the car before I even woke up (at 7) and of course Rebe slept until 10.  We were supposed to leave at 1030 but secretly 11.

So imagine 4500 (6000 including the crew) people trying to get on a boat.  Yes, it really is as bad as it seems, some how they've figured out how to make getting on a boat worst than getting on a plane.  Luckily Tony and Lilian are super elite frequent cruisers so we got to go in the priority line which shortened the line torture.

I will give it to the cruise lines, they do keep track of who is on the boat.  Every time you step on or off they scan your ID (room card) to ensure they have an accurate count otherwise it'd be pure madness in trying to locate that one idiot who drank too much at Señor Frogs.

Front L to R: Yeli (Rebe's sister), Lilian, Rebe, Tony, Emily (Terry's Mom)
Rear L to R: Me, Terry (Yeli's husband), Troy (Yeli's youngest son), John (Terry's Dad)

Finally aboard the boat and it was very nice, not as majestic as the Disney boat we were aboard back in 2012 but still pretty nice.  Our room steward, Gugum, was from Philippines and an extremely nice guy and super helpful for anything we needed while aboard.  Luckily the cruise carries luggage to your room, again imagine 4500 people trying to use all the boat elevators, which I believe there were probably 18-20, so we hit the stairs from the main deck of 4 up to 9.

Disney Magic - Storm Runner

Since this trip was to celebrate Tony and Lilian's 50th wedding anniversary, Rebe and Yeli (Rebe's sister) had their parent's room decorated.

Being a Carnival boat, there's always a party somewhere and they put on an awesome sail away party.  People everywhere, music banging and everyone getting loose as the boat pulled out into the Atlantic.

Sail Away Party

On cruises you are assigned a specific table with your party or with random people, it really depends on how large your party is and also what you request.  And after dinner we had our first night of amazing comedians, the first night they had two comedians who performed different sets for the first three nights on the boat and each night 2 sets each.  Each comedian would do an early show which was kid safe and then a late show that was adult only, and goodness the adult shows were always amazing.  Live comedy is truly something to witness and no one in the crowd was safe, if they could see you... well prepare to be embarrassed.

- Sunday July 3rd -

First full day on the boat means a full day at sea while we sail to our first destination, so in essence a relax day, a spa day or how ever you get down.  We got a late start as, well we had no where to be and literally no where to go.  Upstairs on deck 10 was the main buffet for all your hearts desires in breakfast selections where we met with the family and afterwards everyone split up to do their own thing.  As you might guess, I'm not one for laying out in the sun since I've already perfected my tan and who needs skin cancer anyway?  Rebe and I found a spot on the shady side of the boat which surprisingly very few people utilized, most people were up on deck 10 where they have a few pools that would hold normally 10-15 people but on a cruise the sky is the limit and it's standing room only.

One of those tiny pools

Later in the day we hid in the adult only area up deck 13 where they had a few chairs with shade.  In the afternoon we played trivia with Troy (spontaneous movie savant), Lilian and Yeli in one of the lounges and also watched the semifinals of the european soccer championship.

Dinner and more comedians finished the first full day on the boat off.

- Monday July 4th- 

Now to the main event... well the days we got to see new places.  The first stop was Amber Cove, Puerto Plato in the Dominican Republic, never heard of it?

Photo courtesy Facebook 

Wouldn't surprise me, this place is on the northern part of the island and about 5 hours driving from Punta Cana (the place where most people vacation in DR).  Sometimes when cruise operators don't have a place to park their boats or countries can't afford to build a port for them, they'll do it themselves and that's what Carnival did here (they only spent $85 million).  As you can see from the photo there's not much nearby but of course some duty free shopping, also Carnival did build a nice bar/pool/chair area next to the shopping so if one doesn't want to tour the island they are more than welcome the hangout in the nice pool facility.

We've never been here before and didn't know what was a good shore excursion, so we just winged it.  Walked out the front of the facility with Rebe's mom (her dad and sister's family decided to do a catamaran/snorkel trip) in search of the perfect beach.  After haggling with the taxi drivers and finding some randos (other random cruise people) to join us to help cut down on the fees for the taxi we traveled over to Sousa Beach.  The beach was just perfect, nice sand, nice water, nice shade, food and drinks, what more could you need?

Sousa Beach

A Real Piña Colada in a Piña

I had mentioned Rebe's sister's family and her dad and decided on a catamaran/snorkel trip, they just happened to catch the boat at our beach and we coincidentally watched them catch the boat.  They had no clue where they would catch the boat and of course we didn't know they were going to crash our beach, but it was very funny that we ran into each other 45 minutes from the boat.

Spent the day in the water and in the shade just enjoying ourselves, definitely a 10 of 10.

Carnival Magic at Port, note the tiny people lined up to get back on the boat.

Back on the boat for dinner and of course more comedians.

- Tuesday July 5th-

St. Thomas as seen from the parked boat

St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands.  What a beautiful place, I see why people would want to visit this place, but I can also see why people could avoid it.  Why to visit, oh it's beautiful of course and mountainous, the people are friendly and it just seems a bit homey.  But why wouldn't you want to come, well if you got 3 cruise ships hitting the port everyday bringing an extra 13,000 people to an island of 50,000.  I bet you could get to places where the tourist don't visit, but I'm not so sure because the island isn't that big (only 30sq miles).

West Indian Company Dock as seen from the island
Our boat is the right most. Side note: the boat in front left first...some how

For this day we decided to do an island tour to just see the highlights of the island, and this was dare I say entertaining or rather interesting. We avoided the island tour provided by the cruise as they are always more expensive to their 'captive' audience, we found a local provider and were to meet them just outside the security gate.  Notice I say "were to" as they were not there when we walked out, no signs, nothing. Yeli, Rebe's sister, had planned this so we were giving her some .  Finally after 10-15 mins an open air bus with a La Cucaracha horn pulls up and we all hop on to begin the tour, I'm not sure that they actually checked tickets as we got on the bus, I think 3 people on the bus didn't even pay.  Bus driver introduces himself as we get on as Money Love (I may be wrong) but doesn't say much else as he takes off towards the mountains, but then he swing a left into a parking lot.  Seems there was another family who had managed to get off the cruise boat quickly and had been waiting on the rest of us stragglers for at least 30 minutes, when they got on the bus momma was furious.  Okay so now that we had everyone, it was time to head for the tour... or so we thought.  The bus headed into town as the main mountain road starts from town and the bus stopped again in front of a few shops with probably 20 tourists with bags who looked like they were waiting on the bus, yes the bus that we were sitting on.  Money Love hops out of the front seat, big smile, "first stop, shopping!" The 20 people on our bus didn't move an inch, he now has a dilemma of 40 people who want to now do an island tour.  He then goes into a spill of "if you have a brown ticket..." and everyone gave him some .  He was saved by his tour operator buddies showing up with extra buses so everyone who wanted to go at that time was able to.

Money Love hopped back in the bus and floored it, literally.  He was trudging this 20 person, no seatbelt having bus up this twisty 25mph speed limited road at probably 45mph all while playing music at full blast and singing along into a PA system that was causing a bit of permanent hearing loss.  I have been on a few buses in my life in a few less fortunate countries and have seen the maniacs that exist out there but this guy was on a whole 'nother level.  Speeding and darting doesn't really bother me (professional roller coasterist) but this bus on the mountain roads actually had me fearing a bit (I really need to take more pictures for the blog).

Panorama of Magens Bay

Yours truly and the Rebe

After requisite stops of overviews of the island and of course more shopping, we were given a chance to choose a beach or even more shopping.  We choose the beach at Magens Bay, it is the beach shown in the image above and it was an amazing beach.  A bit crowded with the previously mentioned 13,000 tourists but of course it all 13,000 weren't on the beach but it was crowded.  Being more than 1/2 mile long we found space away from the crowds and ample space to relax.

Money Love picked us up at the beach and on another treacherous ride to the port, Terry (brother-in-law), Tony and I decided to have a beer before actually getting back on the boat at a local bar. 

Beer at the Tap and Still with Terry and Tony

The bar had a live band that was amazing too.

Barefoot Band at the Tap and Still

Then back to the boat for dinner and I believe we saw a show in the main theater this night as they gave the new comedians a night off.  It was a magic show and had a few standard tricks but then this new laser trick which really left me scratching my head.  Here's an example of the trick to which I'm referring.

- Wednesday July 6th -

Puerto Rico and more specifically Old San Juan.  I've never been to Cuba, but old San Juan is what I would imagine Havana would look like minus the newer cars.  This was another port where we thought we'd do our own tour rather than paying the boat to chauffeur us around plus it would give us more time to explore on our own and go to more places off the beaten path.

Old San Juan has a few trolleys that run through the city for free and we were smart enough to walk into the city a little bit and catch a trolley.  Lucky for us because the bus circled back to the port where the cruise boats were and a line that was SUPER long full of other cruisers who had the same idea.

After being on the trolley for a few minutes we were across town to Castillo San Felipe del Morro or El Morro, which is a fort that was built in the 1530's to defend San Juan Bay and also has the first line of defense to the New World for Spain.

Main Entrance to El Morro

We spent a few hours touring the fort which has 6 levels, from the coast all the way up to the lighthouse you see in the above image.  

After suffering in the heat and walking up and down this fort, it was time for lunch and what better to do than eat some true Puerto Rican food.  We asked one of the National Park Rangers at El Morro of where would could go to get some homestyle local food and he recommended Cafeteria Mallorca.  Not quite a hole-in-the-wall but far from a fancy restaurant and just down home goodness on menu.

The Mallorca a San Juan classic, not to confused with the Spanish island, is a soft sweet bread that is used as a sandwich roll, most commonly for grilled ham and cheese, but sliced in two, buttered up and pressed flat between the hot steel plates of a griddle. Then of course covered with powdered sugar.

After lunch and our major objective done for the day, now what?  Well let's go see, as Tony would say, more "old rocks."  We hiked across old San Juan to see the Castillo de San Cristóbal or the Fort San Cristóbal, both of these forts are just spectactular in how they were built in the time they were built.  The San Cristóbal and probably the same for the El Morro have cisterns to hold rain water because as you know, it is not like you can just scoop water out of the ocean and drink it so they devised a system to hold and protect the most precious of resources. 

Tony taking in the courtyard of Castillo de San Cristóbal 

Over the past few years, Rebe and myself have become "foodies" and one of the things that Rebe loves is Tres Leches.  For those not in the know, Tres Leches literally means Three Milks but it's not a drink but rather a cake that has been soaked in three milks and then covered in meringue.  There's two sins in doing it wrong, the first is a dry piece of tres leches this is NEVER an acceptable serving.  Very rare will you get served a dry piece, and it's actually never happened to me.  But number two is a very common occurrence and that is to replace the meringue with whipped creme.  

I had to give you a little backstory before I proceeded, I told you of the place we ate lunch and of course we had recommendations for lunch from friends who had been to Puerto Rico before.  We had obviously eaten lunch before so why not get a snack and have a drink... Rebe and I were in the area of the most highly recommended restaurant, which was packed, so why not try the tres leches at the recommended place?  Well I had two drinks...both sub par and then we ordered tres leches and why did they serve it with whipped creme????  I think I saw a few blood vessels in Rebe's forehead explode when the server put the plate down, she was so mad she asked the server verbatim, "where can I get some real tres leches?"  I was , no she didn't.  Ain't giving no fux today huh?  Server was all confused, I had to tell them nevermind.  Oh Rebe, what to do with her?  I will say the normal food in the restaurant did look amazing, maybe next time...

Back to the boat to enjoy the boat leaving San Juan and floating by El Morro one more time as below.  Dinner and comedians as usual.

El Morro from the Sea

- Thursday July 7th -

Grand Turk as seen from the boat

Grand Turk, of Turks and Caicos fame.  A really laid back day here, why venture off into the island which appears flatter than a pancake when you could enjoy the crystal clear water and $3 beers (despite the ludicrous $8 coconuts)?  I had thought Megans beach in St. Thomas was crowded, WWWOOOOOOOO.

Here's a pic of the chairs just for reference.

Grand Turk Beach Chairs

Imagine all of those chairs FULL, not a spare chair to be seen.  And then add all the rest of the people who didn't have a chair to be standing in the water right in front of all of those chairs.  Beautful beach, but not quite my idea of a relaxing day at the beach.  Funny thing about this is that for some reason everyone just stayed in this section which was a bit rocky under the water (bad sand).

If only they were as smart as us... we decided to walk a little further down the beach.  Not. A. Soul.  Same water, and surprisingly even nicer sand.  I know it all looks the same but trust me, there is a difference and the feet never lie.

Behind the chairs was a Margaritaville, you know that Jimmy Buffet guy, a large pool for the cruise guests and a Flowrider.  What's a Flowrider, it's like a self contained wave generator (think surfing).

Flowrider - Image courtesy http://www.grandturkcc.com/

Back to the boat for the usual, and now the boat starts heading back to Port Canaveral.

- Friday July 8th -

Day 7 was another day trapped on the boat or as the cruise people sell it, "a day at sea."  You can't really complain about the days at sea, the days at port really feel like you're rushed to take advantage of a day in a new place.  You have to wake up early, stuff some food in your belly at the boat buffet because you already paid for the free on the boat food.  Then you run down to the lower deck to get off the boat and enjoy your day in a new island paradise, enjoy your day then run back to catch the boat so you don't get left behind and miss the rest of your journey.

Nothing too memorable about the morning, but lunch was something special.  On the boat they have the main dining room which is where you eat dinner every night but in addition there are a few extra restaurants that you can enjoy for an upcharge.  One being a steakhouse and the other being an Italian restaurant but we didn't partake in these as we felt the main dining room served similar meals, if not the same meals at least once.  Plus, I live in Houston I doubt they can make a steak better than a few places I've been (true foodie snob).  But I digress, also on the days at sea there was a Guy Fieri (yes, that guy) BBQ joint again being from Georgia and living in Texas for a while now I was a bit skeptical.  Guy came through and the line was long, but I think the line was long due to the fact that in the 7 days on the boat the BBQ place was only open twice.

Random picture I took

Final evening on the boat was uneventful, a bit a of packing, a bit of dinner and said our good byes to the lovely people who had taken care of us all week.  Yes, there was comedy at night, but also there was a night (this may have happened on Thursday, this is what I get for waiting to write these anecdotes) where the entertainment group led by the cruise director a young gentleman from Atlanta put on a "Newlywed Game" event.  You know the game, the host ask the men a question and the women then have to match and then the reverse is performed.  We tried to get Tony and Lilian to sign up but they were giving us the look of death, so we backpedalled slowly.  The twist on the boat is that they usually pick the newest couple on the boat (days married), and middle length couple (5-12 years married) and then of course the oldest marriage couple is actually able to make it to the stage, just kidding they were a pretty spry couple who had been married 50+ years.  As you can imagine questions like "Name his last girlfriend?" or "Where was the first kiss?" can lead to some interesting interactions between the couples and more specifically the older couple and hearing each of their versions of what happen 50+ years ago was hilarious they were so far from each other on some stories I wondered who was remembering the truth.

All in all a wonderful time and glad we all got together to enjoy each other's company once again.