What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

“What a long strange trip it’s been”- the Grateful Dead

Those words rang so true this past week on my vacation cruise to the Bahamas. Yes, me and nine other women (one being my Mother) cruised through the Caribbean stopping at 3 different islands of the Bahamas for 4 nights. We left out of Miami on Monday (yes, the same day that Tropical Storm Fay showed up) and arrived back on Friday morning… me and 9 other women ranging in age from 42 to 70+. And what a week it was…
First off, let me just say that I did not find out about the tropical storm brewing near Haiti until late Friday night so the entire weekend was spent worrying if the airline would be flying to Miami on Monday morning or if the cruise would be cancelled all because of Fay. I was checking the “projected path” of that storm almost every two hours to see how much closer it was to the Keys and how fast was she moving. My Mother arrived on Saturday afternoon as well so between the worrying, entertaining her and preparing for the trip I was just about stressed out before my vacation had even started! Our plane did fly to Miami on Monday after all… Miami was rainy and it turns out the cruise line decided to leave earlier than scheduled so our 8am flight was not a wasted idea after all! We were on the ship by 12noontime and the ladies were itching to get the party started. Well half the ladies started ordering bottles of wine and got loopy quick and the rest of us checked into our state rooms and waited on our luggage… one scary moment was when we were hanging out on our balcony and watching the crew throwing the luggage from the carts to the ship… somehow they misinterpreted their shot and dropped about 10+ pieces of luggage into the water of the bay! And then they spent over 10 minutes fishing out some poor souls’ bags… we were just praying it was not our clothes! I rationalized at that moment that a bag of wet clothes might not really even matter if it rains our entire trip anyway… But, the rain only hung out all of Monday and half of Tuesday. By Wednesday the sun was out but the winds were high and the ocean was still choppy. We did finally make it into our bathing suits and onto a nice beach on Thursday (which happened to also be my birthday) so it was a great day after all!
To keep from writing a book about the trip, I will just list some of my highlights of the week spent at sea:

· Always keep the top down on the toilets BEFORE you flush! Or it might just suck you into the bowl…
· One of the “oldest” ladies on the trip managed to get way too tipsy on the first night and lost the “bridge” (teeth) on the right side of her mouth!
· Escargot is not that that bad! Kinda tastes like mushrooms or oysters…
· Older women refuse to walk the stairs to one floor above or below! They always want to take the elevator…
· Non-Americans refer to skim milk as “skinny cow”… thanks to all of Judy’s White Russians orders
· It is really hard to walk a straight line when the ship is rocking from the choppy waves
· Birthdays are a really, really big ordeal on a cruise ship… they let us order lobster tails just for my special birthday dinner!
· I think my Mother is a bit of a hypochondriac… she complained the entire trip about motion sickness….
· Oh, and she is a really loud snorer too! I did not sleep the entire trip!

I did forget to mention that the “choppy movements” of the ship really only happened on the first night. As a matter of fact, I remember telling Hubby the next day that I woke up at one point in the night on Monday night and was actually holding onto the bed with both hands and arms to keep from falling off the bed because it felt like the boat was leaning way too far to the left. As it turns out the boat was “listing” due to the bad weather/stormy sea and when the boat leaned or listed as they called it, all of the rainwater from the top deck poured into the main atrium of the boat! They had carpet dryers out the entire trip trying to dry out from that first night! Talk about scary… I am just so glad my Mother slept through all of it.
All in all, the trip was fun. However, I wish Hubby could have been there instead of me and 9 other women. Every lady in the group was so different and each had their own idea of what we should or shouldn’t be doing… it was hard to do any thing all together. I was so glad to get off that ship and make our way home.
Friday was a complete nightmare from the time we stepped off the ship… we made it to our pre-paid tour bus… and then we sat for over an hour waiting for the bus to take us to the airport! Once we got to the airport, checking in was a breeze but, then our flight was not for over 3 hours! We finally boarded our plane around 2:30pm and then we sat on the runway for over 2 hours because of some storm NW of Miami! I thought I was going to die! I sat in that rinky-dink window seat for over 4 hours and my Mother was no help. She was not a happy camper about it either and I just had to sit there and hope they would let us go soon enough. I finally made it home around 8pm on Friday night and Hubby was waiting for me with birthday gifts… Happy Birthday to me!