Cruising

I love going on cruises. This last one was a blast. I just wish it would have been longer so I could have gotten some down time. 3 nights is not enough.

This cruise was different from my other cruises because we went as a small group. 4 couples, no kids. All the grandparents came into town to watch the babies. It was bliss. Don't get me wrong, I missed Liv terribly. I checked in with my Mom compulsively, but it was so nice to be able to have a few (too many) drinks and go dancing and not have to worry about paying the piper in the mornings. I got to sleep as late as I wanted...bliss. pure bliss.

We left Atlanta around 10-10:30 on Thursday. A&A rode with us. We picked them up at 9, then went to Waffle House to start our vacation. So we were a little later then our intended start time. The other 2 couples (H&E and M&P) dove together and left about 10 too but they live on the other side of town and had their own agenda. Since they thought we were leaving at 9 we sent them random text messages the whole way to the hotel, telling them we were farther along on the road. When we were about an hour from the the hotel, we told them we were at the pool...it was fun with all the smack-talk texting going on, it made the trip much faster. Even with the sit-down lunch we had at Bob Evan's they only beat us to the hotel by 1/2 hour.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites Thursday night, E had enough points to pay for 2 rooms, Yea E! and the hotel has a weekday happy hour with free drinks. Guess what we did? Yep, we indulged ourselves, then got a taxi van to take us to Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights. $75 per person. ouch. but in the name of vacation we went.

Horror Nights was a lot of fun. It was also a lot of standing in line. They had 8 haunted houses, 6 "scare zones" and a couple of the everyday rides open. We saw 3 of the haunted houses,3 scare zones and did Jaws, Men In Black and the Mummy ride before the park closed. Not to shabby considering the haunted house lines were 45 minutes to 90 minutes long (I timed the houses themselves and they took 6 to 10 minutes to go thru) The last time I was at Universal I was pregnant with Liv, so I couldn't ride any of the fun rides, so my favorite part was riding the rides and being tipsy during it. I can't say I've ever done that before.

We got ourselves up and moving in time for the free breakfast, which at Embassy, rocked. I had a made to order omelet, juice and hash browns. It was just what I needed after all the drinking the night before. We checked out, went to CVS for a few forgotten items (not mine!) and started the 45 minute drive to the Port.

Embarking was a little off. The first half was smooth, the lines were short and went fast. Then the card machine broke. Dun, Dun, Dun!!! so we sat and waited 45 minutes until we could get in the line to board the ship. The good part about that was our rooms were ready when we got on and we could drop off all of our stuff.

This was my first cruise with Royal Caribbean and I found the Monarch of the Seas to be exactly as I expected it to be. My only gripe was the bathroom vanity. It was nice and large, but nowhere to secure your stuff. Carnival Celebrity's bathroom was better.

More tomorrow......