The Cubicle’s Backporch

First of all. Cruise Equals AWESOMENESS.

MrC, myself, and a group of 8 of our friends went on a 7-day cruise to the Mexican Riviera (Cabo, Mazaltan, and Puerto Vallarta). It was our first cruise (love!) and MrC’s first time flying (eek!). But we got to LA in one piece and soon we were getting ready to get on this big ass ship:

Front half of the ship.

Back half of the ship

The ship was big. It held 3,006 guests and like 1,800 crew and staff. Crazy! I’m pretty sure that’s more people than the little burg I grew up in had.

We got to our room and found these from our travel agent:

Yumm.

And the drinks? Are strong. HEAVY on the alcohol. AKA- Perfect!

But anyways, back to the pictures:

I was a little scared to see our room. I knew it wasn’t going to be spacious, but I was afraid it would be claustrophobic-like. But really, it wasn’t bad:

They had an adults-only deck which was nice. (Especially when the well-muscled guy came out in his speedo… Ha!)

They also had an outdoor walking/jogging track:

And we found this little guy in our room when we got back from dinner:

Each night there was a different towel-creature on our bed. They even had a book on how to create the different towel figures.

Our friends had told us that the people on cruises are herded around like cattle. And they weren’t kidding. When we first got there, we waited in line to get our room keys (which also served as our pay-for-everything card), then we went and stood in a big group with a number we were assigned. Then they started loading according to numbers. But really, it was impressive that they got that many people loaded as quickly as they did.

So we got on the ship and went straight to eat b/c we were STARVING. They had the buffets open and I got my first fruity drink. And OMG it was fabulous. They tack on 15% gratuity to each drink so we had no problem getting servers to bring us drinks. But after my first drink? I was already buzzing. That’s how strong they were. And they had a ‘drink of the day’ each day which came in a special cup that you could keep.

One thing our friends commented on was how much we could feel the ship move, as compared to their previous cruises. The water was pretty rough for the first couple of days, but you could feel the boat moving all week. I never quite got my full sea legs.

Stay tuned for Day 2.