I'll take your black socks and sandals and raise you DRESS socks and sandals...

Wow...I'm a bad blogger! Only 3 in ten days....In my defense, I was quite busy, the internet connection was slow and shady at best and I needed to arrange a time to use my mom's card because she is a platinum member and gets free internet(it's 27$US an hour otherwise..yikes).

I'm at home! I had quite the airport ordeal. I waited 2 hours for my luggage in Calgary. They said that the doors to the luggage compartment were frozen shut and kept saying 5 more minutes for 2 hours. Finally the bags start to come... but then they had a luggage jam which took 20 minutes to fix...then after all that my luggage didn't even arrive! Me, in my infinite wisdom, left my house keys in my checked bag...I know, rocket scientist over here. So when the Air Canada guy tried to tell me they would send the bag to my house in a day or two, when they find it, I told him that unfortunately that was not an option as I choose not to camp on my front lawn until Air Canada figures out where my bag is. So the nice boy sensing tears about to flow(it is midnight now) went back to manually hunt through everything...he told me, on the down low, that the doors weren't actually frozen shut but that the airline had really accidentally sent all our bags through customs, on the other side on the airport, and they got misplaced. In summary, a half hour later I have my bag and house keys and a valuable lesson.

So, the cruise...well the cruise took an unexpected turn for the better the evening of the deck party.

So we finish dinner and my parents and the other couples at the table say they are heading up for the deck party....you know congo, limbo, and more woohoo....I head back to the room to change into jeans and go up to find them about 10 minutes later. I look and look and they are nowhere to be seen so I decide to do one more lap before heading back to the room to go to bed when this drunk guy, Brian, grabs me and tells me he's seen me around by myself and there is a small group of younger people that met the first night cruise and party every night...now he's kinda weird, very stoned, and creepily hitting on me but I am curious about these mysterious young people he mentioned...could it be true??? So I follow him only to be introduced to an even weirder guy on the way to the bar.... when Brian says he wants to buy me a drink I tell him no but that I will maybe come back and find him later. I am not impressed so far and don't want to let him buy me a drink and have him hit on me any more or get the wrong idea. So I go back to the room and watch TV for maybe a half an hour....and debate...are they all weird or could I be missing out on some fun?...I have been so bored up to now I decide to risk it and head back up just to try and see who he is hanging out with from a distance and decide what to do. So as I just step out on deck he pounces on me and says come and meet the gang... I follow with bated breath and I meet my new best friends for the next 5 days. Out of 1900 people on this boat there are about 8 cool people in their 20's and they somehow all met the first night in the disco lounge(I stuck my head in and judged it too harshly and left after 30 seconds...) I haven't seen them around because they stay up late partying and sleep in. I was keeping old person hours, that was my problem.

My New Friends

From Left to right: Sean, Doug, ME, Kyle, Kate, Britney

Sean: From Barnaby, works on the ship as youth security
Britney: From Vancouver, also works on the ship as youth security
Kyle and Kate: From Los Angeles, dating, on a cruise as a present from her parents
Tyson and Robin: From Nevada, Just married on their honeymoon
Doug: From Vermont, like me on a cruise with his parents
Brian: From Utah, Crazy drunk/stoned guy that introduced me to everyone
My hours magically changed from a bedtime of 10pm to staying up until 4am. Me and Doug are literally attached at the hip for the next 4 days as he is they only other non-couple person in the group that doesn't work on the ship...Brian doesn't count as he is stoned 24/7 and a little weird. He mocks as well as me and we spend hours making fun of stuff. Corny things I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole alone are now pretty damn fun...Karaoke night, for example, is so hideously bad it is good. As it turns out all the cruise was missing was someone else to mock it with...DO NOT take a cruise without your mocking partner. There's drinking, 3am pool parties, room parties in Tyson and Robin's honeymoon suite, people to drink margaritas by the pool with...I wish I had met them all the first night.

I take back the mean things I said about DJ Dan...DJ Dan ROCKS!

Ok, now I sound like a freak. The cruise is still just as corny but I am now having a blast because I have friends to hang out with and am no longer bored out of my mind.

We visited 3 more islands:

Martinique-I actually stayed on the boat for this one. I was tired of the tourist shopping and was having too much fun hanging out by the pool with Doug, Kyle and Kate....and I might have been hung over.

St. Thomas- I was signed up for that hiking/snorkeling tour I mentioned...but the day of I got a note saying it was also cancelled due to lack of interest...shocker. As a backup plan they have this neat gondola that goes up to one of the mountains so Me and Doug decide to go on that, we went hiking at the top and watch all the chameleons and geckos play (far more amusing than it sounds) and then sit in the bar at the top and drink these drinks called Bushwhackers....it's frozen like an alcoholic ice cappacino...it was like 90% alcohol: baileys, Kahlua, chocolate liqueur. I can't remember all of them but was drunk from a small glass. It was an awesome day. We headed back for a nap and after dinner there was more various partying.

Sea day- Had a day at Sea...just suntanned with everyone...Sean had the day off so hung out with us as well, swam, drank, had pizza etc.

Princess Kays- This is an island which the princess ship owns a private beach on..it was the most fun day out of all of them. Everyone just basked on the white sand beach drinking copious buckets of beer, there was a huge BBQ buffet and we stayed until the very last boat back to the ship dragged us from our loungers. Had a good last night ...room party at the honeymoon suite...it was fun but sad cause we were all flying in different directions in the morning. We said our farewells and here I am..back in Canada...my skins a little darker, my liver's a little bigger.

Cruising week 1

I'm back..yes, long delay in posts but I have had some internet issues...once it froze up on me and another time I almost finished an entry and the computer spontaneously re-booted itself and I lost everything...the ship ate my homework.

So.....Day 6 on the cruise ship.....Here is an amusing sampling of the daily itinerary..there are many exciting options for activities:

8:00am - Brainwaves quiz
10:30am - Table tennis Get-together
11:30am - Brunch-time trivia
2:15pm - Pictionary
3:15pm - Shuffleboard
3:30pm - Afternoon tea served in a musical atmosphere
4:30pm - Afternoon trivia quiz
5-9:00pm - Pre-dinner music with Anatolie and Pawel
7:30pm - Fine Arts

I know you think I made that up...I SWEAR I didn't.....I don't even HAVE that good an imagination. In case you are curious...I chose option B: drink margarita's by pool, work on tan, win epic battle with Fatty McFatFat for last chocolate chip cookie at the buffet.

There's not really anything fun to do for anyone under 50 here. Last night's evening activities were:

A) 1950's Sock Hop (again, I swear I didn't make that up)
B) Hokey musical review with the princess dancers(I went to it the other night and hmm..where do I start. It would be great to go to with a friend so I would have someone to mock it with. The two leads were actually singing but the Chorus was lip-sincing...BADLY. This one guy didn't seem to know the words to the songs and it looked like a kung Fu movie where you hear the English but the actor's lips are moving to different words ..only he would join in late whenever they held a note...and then look so proud, like he thought no one noticed... which made it funnier, the poor boy, he tried so hard I felt bad laughing at him.)
C) Piano bar

Again, in case you're curious I chose option D...go to bed..try to read but to drunk from sunbathing with margarita's and too tired from 5-course plate service force feeding and am sleeping by 10:30pm...Whose the old person now?!

We have visited 3 Islands so far. St. Vincent, Granada, and St. Lucia.

St. Vincent was really dirty...I was very unimpressed by it..it was reminiscent of Tijuana, but without the shopping...We arrived about 5 hours late due to strong headwinds sailing and only had a few hours before the ship left so not really time to head out to anywhere nicer on the island. I'm sure there were nice beaches or something away from the downtown slums. Funny though...for a tourist place there was little to no shopping, 5-10 stalls by the boat selling beaded necklaces and T-shirts but nothing else, not even a restaurant or bar to sit in. We just walked around for an hour and headed back to the ship.

Granada was really pretty. It's still a poor place that was hit hard by Hurricane Ivan a few years ago but not slummy and dirty...it was nice...tons of little houses built into the cliffs, lots of lush rain forest, little kids everywhere playing, waterfalls, rivers ect. Their main trade there is spices...especially nutmeg, so most people are spice farmers. We took a couple hour bus tour of the island which was nice to see...nice to get away from the tourist crap that surrounds the ship! Our bus had some rude ignorant Americans on it, which was unfortunate, but I had fun anyway. Did a little shopping...bought some spices, and some nutmeg syrup.

St.Lucia was a bigger more city-like island. Has a really nice harbor. Didn't do much here...I wanted to go on this really fun sounding tour...A rain forest trip with a 3 hour canopy ropes course...how cool would that be?? The description said an active action adventure...so I assumed it was something fun and athletic and the pictures of it looked cool. However, the trip was cancelled due to lack of interest. That sucks...There was a tour I wanted to do in St. Thomas(2 days from now) and it was also cancelled due to lack of interest..it was a bike trip down a mountain into a beach for snorkeling. I did manage to book a 2 hour hike with swim/beach time on a nice white sand beach for St.Thomas...they needed 4 people so they wouldn't cancel the tour and 3 others had already signed up..so yeah! Hopefully it is fun!

Tonight's entertainment consists of:

A)C'est Manifique the French musical review...
B)Name that tune
C)Island night tropical deck party....this is a quote: "A night to remember; Games, Prizes, Surprises, Limbo, Congo and more..." Well, if there's congo....Also: "Our chef has prepared an amazing buffet you will have the opportunity to take pictures of it from 11pm and 11:15pm"
Oh, there's more..." Disco on deck!! DJ Dan keeps the party going"

Haha!

They also take pictures of you doing everything here and then print them of with a corny background and sell them to you at $15 a pop. Every time you leave the ship, every time you have a formal night at dinner, around the pool, at your dinner table...I'm expecting them to set up at the bathroom door any day now. I could buy all the photo's of me and use them like a flip book.

Family Cruise through the Caribbean

Greetings!

I am writing this from somewhere in the Atlantic.

The flight down was long....we flew over on AirMiles, so the only flight available was the red eye...We left Calgary at midnight and flew to Toronto then flew from Toronto at 9:30 to Fort Lauderdale arriving at 14:00. The one bonus was that the only seats available through Air Miles were on first class...Before yesterday I was a first-class virgin...(Yes, that sentence sounds funny out of context) And although I can't say the seats were any more comfortable or reclined further than cattle class, we were fed meals..on real china no less...and the best part: First Class Lounge...I was aware such a thing existed but thought it was just a waiting area with some leather recliners or something...but no my friends...the first class lounge is a beautiful, beautiful oasis in the middle of the airport...television, comfy chairs, couches, open bar(yep, you read that right), cappaccino machine, buffet tables of food, free newspapers and magazines, a bathroom that rivals any 5 star hotel I've been to, a fireplace....I didn't want to leave, you could actually vacation IN the first class lounge, no reason to fly anywhere...maybe next year.

Florida is warm...mid-twenties and humid..I like it. Did a little shopping and I crash early after a night of no sleep...I dream of the first class lounge.

We boarded the ship at noon....I think it is best for me to describe the ship and my ship experiences in two categories...Non-mocking and mocking. There is much to mock but don't want it to sound like I have a bad attitude or am having a bad time by making all entries 100%mocking...yet, must mock......Can't. Keep. It. In.

Boarded the ship at noon...fairly efficient considering the large numbers of people boarding, over 1900 on this ship. There's not much to say about today...really just unpacked and ate...then ate...then showered...then ate...then internet....I would say the median age here is 55. Very few young people... a few kids (because of Easter break) and maybe a handful in the 25-35 range at most. Our rooms are pretty nice, I'm sharing with my mom. They have 2 single beds, a little desk and seating area by the window and a small bathroom. Small, but more than enough room..and who wants to spend any more time in their room then necessary when in the Caribbean? Got settled then ate at the buffet for lunch and suntanned a bit(my Egypt base is serving me well) and had dinner. We are in a plate serving dinner that eats at 20:15 every night, you sit with the same people. To eat you get a choice for 4-5 items for each category(appy,soup,salad, main, dessert) and they change the theme nightly. We are sharing a table with Kelly and Tony from London. They seem nice, Tony drives a taxi...I missed what Kelly does, and Dennis and Pat. They were on the other side of the table so I can't tell you much about them but also from somewhere in the UK. They all seem nice enough so probably no food fights.

Food: you can literally eat 24 hours a day here....There's a 24 hour buffet, plate service for breakfast,lunch, dinner, an all day pizza restaurant, all day hamburger/hotdog grill, bars everywhere, steakhouse, Italian restaurant, ice cream stand....it's a crazy amount of food. We had our lunch at the buffet and it was a bitter fight for supremacy..I mean, Lady, relax! The jello's not going anywhere!!! Oh, and the plates they give you at the buffet...not a dinner plate..oh, no...an oval platter..like the one you display your turkey on at thanksgiving, with raised edges for optimal food heapage...like 15inches diameter...and the "small" plates that they stack by salad/fruit stand were dinner plates.

-Funny Family's-

1. Matching Outfit Family: there is an entire family who are wearing matching red golf shirts...oh, wait it gets worse...you're thinking red golf shirts, how cute..Deb, why are you so judgmental??? You think that only because I have yet to mention...wait for it.... wait for it.....matching red velour track suits with white stripes down the side...there's like 8 of them...matching right down to the baby(I'll try to get a picture)...I wonder though....did they buy 10 days of red shirts to wear, or do they switch colors everyday?...and if that's the case, do they plan their outfit color the day before...or did they make a calendar before they left? ....I mean how embarrassing would it be to show up for dinner with a red shirt when the rest are wearing blue?

2. Walkie-talkie Family: There's a family on board that all carry walkie-talkies and communicate via these...For example: "What is your location, over" "I'm in the room, over" "Standby, I'm enroute to your location, over and out" I saw the dad talking on them and he was all intense like he was pretending to be on a secret FBI sting operation...he was throwing 10-4's and roger's all over the place...Again, will try to get picture...perhaps shoot a little video.

Fanny Packs : Fanny packs everywhere....I don't really have a good fanny pack story but will take some photos and perhaps piece together a collage for the BLOG...maybe a power point presentation set to music...hmmm...

*I'm still on the lookout for black socks and sandals...will alert you all ASAP.

Wow...just realized it is 12:30.....I will have to write more tomorrow. We have 2 full days of sailing before we get to the first island...so my next two days will consist of... Eat,tan,eat,tan,nap,shower,eat,sleep.. Repeat. (Attn:Order may vary)

Home Safe

I'm back...it feels good to sleep in your own bed again!

We had a great last day in Cairo. Afaf and Hassan picked us up from the hotel and took us to the Khan el Kalili market after all...and they were right about the parking..it was chaos at best but we got a spot. I'm really glad we went! It was a cool place to shop...I only wish we could have had more time to leisurely roam through, but for the sake of my wallet it is good we didn't! We shopped for a couple hours and had a really good lunch/dinner at 3pm(our last Egyptian meal, sniff...)

I bought a really cool Arabic guitar..it is called an oud and it is a kind of lute. It was a pain to lug with me the whole way home but will be an awesome souvenir and hopefully I will figure out how to play it...I'm not sure I'll be able to find enough info about it because it's kind of obscure. I did manage to find out what to tune the strings to but it isn't the same standard tuning of a 6-string and the oud has 11 strings so regular 6-string chords won't apply either...that and there are no frets which would require real precision to play and hit the right spots. It may just become decoration, but that will be fine too. I also bought some perfume. Sue got this 40 pound marble "mummification organ jar" it will look cool in her house and thankfully we managed to fit it in her luggage!

Afaf and Hassan took us back to their house to wait for our plane..it left Cairo at 4am so we slept at their house until 12:30 and they drove us to the airport . We were very lucky to have them to take care of us on our last day!

The flight home was looooong. I can't sleep in a sitting position so wasn't able to get any sleep on the flight to Frankfurt and then there was the 6.5 hour layover in the Frankfurt airport. At least there is enough stuff in the Frankfurt airport to entertain us a bit. We both bought our bodyweight in German chocolate and Haribo(German licorice . The last flight to Calgary was the worst part: 10.5 hours cramped on an airplane. By that time we were exhausted and sick of sitting around...not to mention we had been awake the better part of 48 hours. Guy, Sue's husband, picked us up from the airport and I was so glad to be home. My house has never looked so good. My wonderful mommy left me flowers and stocked my fridge so I had some dinner and unpacked a bit. I wouldn't let myself go to bed before 9pm so I could switch myself over to the different time zone and avoid waking up at 3am wide awake. Despite my efforts though, I awoke at 4:30 wide awake but remembered that Sue gave me an emergency Imovane before we left the plane so gulped that down and slept until 10am. I still feel a little crappy...but should be back to normal in a day or two. I think a shower will help...I wanted one so bad last night but remembered to late that I turned my water tank down to vacation setting and it wasn't hot enough...I settled for a quick hot tub instead.


THE PYRAMIDS

AFAF AND HASSAN

THE WESTERN DESERT































































ASWAN


















NILE CRUISE
































VARIOUS TEMPLES: ESNA,KOMO-ONU,EDFU,KARNAK, ABU SIMBEL, AND LUXOR





PARASAILING

SUNSETS


MY 30TH BIRTHDAY DINNER LUXOR
SHARM EL-SHEIKH
CAIRO


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