Sail Away with Me!

The cruise set sail on April 26th, 2009 from the Fort Lauderdale for a ten day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. There are way too many details to write about here, so I will try to sum it all up with a few bullet points.

• The dinners were amazing every single night. You had a choice of three or four appetizers, entrées, and deserts. You could ask for them all if you wanted, which was the best part. There were also buffets, cafes, and bars open around the clock anytime you got hungry or thirsty. All free! Besides booze :(.

• We participated in as many dances classes as we could. We are now seasoned in the Merengue, Tango, a little salsa, and some line dancing. We made a lot of new friends doing this. It was pretty fun. We kind of fizzled out of it toward the end of the trip but that’s just because of all the activities that were going on. We watched gameshows, had scavenger hunts, trivia competitions, worked out at the gym, attended tea time (my favorite aftenoon activity), and I even got to partake in a ridiculous boxer competition were I had to go against someone in boxing gloves and see how many pairs of boxer shorts I could put on in a minute.

• Ramsey and I participated in a sexy legs competition. We were pulled aside after watching a Bar Wars competition in which two teams had to try their best o create a drink concocted by one of the bar tenders. I was the first to go for sexy legs and had a fun time shaking it around the pool. I never placed but our new pal Dave took second and Ramsey brought home the gold! He never heard the end of it.


 

• The friendships we made were the best thing that happened to us on board, I think. We met people from all over. It didn’t take long for all of the younger crew members to get to know each other. I was one of 11 people under 30 years. It didn’t matter though. Everyone we met had a spirit that was just as young, if not younger, as ours were. We also met some people from England who said they would be pleased to have us come and work for them in their restaurant. This is when we started contemplating extending our adventure to a year.


 

• We spent many nights participating in the Princess Pop Star competitions. Princess because that is the name of the cruise line, not because it was for woman and fairy boys. Lindsey, Ramsey and I sang every night. I got into the finals by singing Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive”. Lindsey had the most hysterical and fun performances out of everyone. They had eight people in the final competition. I thought Crystal was going to take it with “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt. I was shocked when they called my name at the end of the competition. It was a great feeling. I guess the crowd just happened to be in a “Piano Man” mood that night.

• Skywalker’s Bar. What can I say? We spent every single night up at that place. There was a lot of dancing and good ol’ fashioned fun going down. It may have been a little empty on the dance floor at times, but we still managed to keep the place rocking. Lindsey and I got somewhat hypnotized by the hypnotist one night up there. He tried to make me smell something very gross. I crapped my pants by mistake… j/k. I couldn’t smell a thing.

• The pool deck is where we spent most of our days. Just lounging, swimming, and meeting more of the passengers. We had built quite the reputation for ourselves after all the dancing classes and random competitions we participated in. On the rainy days, we would either go to the casino for a little while or hit up tea time and enjoy some amazing hour derives. They also had movies playing every night that you could watch out under the stars or in one of the performance halls. I watched Slum dog Millionaire and Grand Torino.

• We had one excursion during the cruise to Ponta Delgada in the Azores. It was not a very long excursion but it was nice to get off the boat for a few hours. It seemed that most of the passengers lined up tours for the excursion but not us. We decided to hoof it through the city for a while and then found a bargain with a couple of cabs to take the lot of us around part of the island four a couple hours. I got to climb my first mountain here! It wasn’t actually a mountain, more like a giant rock off the coast but it was still awesome. We then proceeded to sneak booze onto our cruise. Mission accomplished!