Vacation....Part II...the Cruise!

So, the day after we spent the night in Lake Jackson, Jeff and I went on to Galveston to board the ship.

The cruise was good. Our vacation goal was spend a few days reading some books while we layed out on the sun decks. Mission accomplished!

Our cruise destinations were Progreso and Cozumel, Mexico.

I can't tell you much about Progreso because we spent most of the time there doing this:


There weren't any Progreso excursions that we were interested in, so we took advantage of the ship being deserted and stayed on-board.

We did get off the ship for a little while and went to the end of the pier to the few shops they had nearby. This is literally all we saw of Progreso.


Cozumel was the next stop. We actually didn't do much more in Cozumel than we did in Progreso. Again, we went to the pier shops, but they had many many more of them. And, we went to Fat Tuesdays for an obnoxiously huge margarita.

We kind of felt guilty not doing any excursions, but it turned out to be a good thing. It ended up raining while we were in Cozumel, which was great for us, because it cooled down the temperature considerably. But, the people that went on actual excursions were kind of bummed.

This here is big time entertainment after one obnoxiously huge margarita.....


We found this little kiosk guy that made bracelets out of string with your name intertwined. I had him make one for both Landry and Korley. It was amazing how fast he could make them--it only took about 10 minutes for both.


The water at Cozumel is so blue and pretty......



At both ports, we were docked next to another Carnival ship--the Fantasy.

It had a really neat looking slide and splash park. We thought our kids would have LOVED to have been on that ship.

Here is our dinky little "main" pool. Although our ship had three pools, they were all really small. They seemed so small for all of the passengers on board.

For anyone considering a Carnival cruise out of Galveston, here's my two cents: :)

First let me say that Jeff and I had a great time. It was nice getting to get away by ourselves and we came back relaxed and refreshed.

I've been on two other cruises before, both on Royal Caribbean. In my opinion, RC is nicer. However, Carnival seemed to cater a lot to families--especially families with tweens and teens. There was a lot to do on the ship for that age group. Like I said before, the pools were shockingly small; however, there was a ton of deck space and lounge chairs. We never couldn't find a chair, which was nice.

The embarkation and debarkation process on Carnival is VERY slow. It's inefficient and could definitely be run more smoothly. We waited in a line for over 2 hours to get on the ship the day we departed. I don't remember that much about the process on the RC cruises, but the fact that I don't remember means that I know we didn't wait 2 hours!

Also, this cruise was full of "Schneiders" ( think One Day at a Time). There were plenty of folk that would wear their Dukes of Hazzard General Lee t-shirts to the formal dining room for dinner. This isn't necessarily a bad thing....definitely makes for interesting people watching. And, definitely entertaining karaoke nights. :)

So, to sum it up--if you're looking for a really luxurious cruise, keep looking. But, this was a great getaway and we had fun. I think our kids would have really enjoyed it, too.