Carnival Splendor, Day 4

Day 4

Well, I was right, the chair man decided that 5:30 is a perfect time to slide chairs across the floor.  

The Chairs that were my alarm clock

I woke up and headed to my spot right outside of the casino to write about yesterday.  It is actually nice at 6:30 because there is nobody around to interrupt your thought process, unlike now while I am writing this one (at 4:00pm), and of all places, I am right next to the kids’ hangout—the arcade and sushi bar.  Lots of kids are running around which is fine, they need a place to go too, right?  I was kind of limited as to where I could go, because there are about 6 plugs on the entire cruise ship, and I didn’t want to hang out in my room.

Today was actually a pretty fun day in the beautiful town of Cabo San Lucas.  Before heading out to Cabo, we went to work out for a little while at the Cloud 9 Spa.  Luckily there were not too many people there, I get very anxious and nervous when I am surrounded by a lot of people, especially at the gym.  I know that I look like I have a sexy body and am very tough and cut, but underneath my shirt, you will find nothing but a white little dough boy with a cute little (ok medium size) spare tire encircling my mid section—not too attractive.  Fortunately my wife thinks I’m sexy, at least she doesn’t say otherwise!  I decided to not show off my lifting capabilities and I just hopped on a treadmill for a nice little jog/walk.  It does feel like you can justify eating a couple more ice cream cones though when you exercise a little (I know it is just my stomach telling me those horribly incorrect falsehoods, but I can’t help it!  I’m addicted to cruise food!)

From the gym we headed down to breakfast where we met up with Gary and Becky.  Madison and Emma have been very wise and have ordered room service every morning, they are taking advantage of the rest and relax that one should do on a cruise.  We decided to head into Cabo at about 10:30.

When we arrived at Cabo San Lucas, we were instantly met by salesmen, very persistent salesmen, and they talked us into going on a 45 minute “tour” up to the arch, and they had a glass bottom boat, which was very homemade.  It was $6 per person, best $6 spent for a tour.  

We saw the arch, and a little rock that looks like an upside down version of Baja California.  We saw a couple of fish come to the bottom of the boat (no sharks unfortunately) to feed on the stringy nastiness on the bottom of the boat. 

Upon arriving back at the marina, we decided to head to La Hacienda which is a super nice hotel that Jim and Jennefer recommended we go and eat at.  Not a big deal except that as the crow flies the hotel was maybe a tenth of a mile, but as we cannot fly like a crow, we had to take the alternative walk like a human route.  That route took us all around the marina, which took about 2 to 2.5 miles.  It was hard because we could see the hotel the entire walk and it was literally right there the whole time.  Every corner we made, we thought this has to be it, but it wasn’t.  There are a couple of drawbacks to walking that route, one is that we had to walk past several of those annoying, will not take no for an answer, salesmen.  Needless to say that Gary, Madison and Emma were all suckered in to their BS sales routine on more than one occasion.  Poor Emma just couldn’t say no to anything.  That said we just continued on.

By the time we reached the hotel, I was sweating profusely, I know, hard to believe huh?  I was not the happiest camper, and Emily was not happy with me being unhappy.  In a situation like that it is so much better to let me just cool off than try to ask me what is wrong, it usually takes about 10 minutes and I am good.  Somewhere in the walk to the hotel, Gary and Becky decided to stay and shop, I felt pretty bad leaving them, mainly because we didn’t see Gary the rest of the trip in Cabo.  It made me feel better because Becky eventually found us, she ditched him too!  We were able to eat there at La Hacienda, but the pool was, and I quote, “the fruits for the homeowners”, not for us meager little peasants. 

We did however get smarter on the return trip, we went to the beach right below the hotel, and played in the ocean for about 30 minutes and then caught a water taxi back to the marina—I wish we knew about that before the 2 mile trek, oh well, we got some great exercise…I just hope that Gary made his way back to the ship, don’t know yet.  

I have to continue this at a different point in the cruise as the guy with the camera is setting up for the picture taking area during dinner, so I am being kicked out of my spot, so bye bye.

Ok, back again.  It is funny that even though more than 12 hours have passed since my last writing, it feels like no time at all has passed for the reader, it’s like a movie, crazy!  Now, back to my story about Gary (which now I know what happened to him).  He did in fact get lost.  He had no idea where we had gone to for lunch, all he knew was orange umbrellas.  He went to the beach where he walked up and down it a couple of times.  He saw a place with orange umbrellas, but we were not there (because it was a different restaurant, the Mango Breeze or something like that).  He saw the one we were at, and decided to not go there because it was a hotel.  So, he just decided to go back to the ship, he didn’t get any lunch, but he did get a Haagen-daz ice cream cone for $8!  We didn’t see him until dinner that evening, where he related his story to us.

Tomorrow is Emily and my 9^th anniversary.  I had to do something amazing for her.  I went around to the shops in the ship to see what I could do, and there in the candy shop they sold roses as well, and they deliver to the room!  So, I got one single rose (I am cheap), and told them to deliver it to our room at 8:00 tomorrow morning, I hope she likes it.

At dinner, I was able to try (for the very first time in my life) shark.  I didn’t know what to expect, I hate everything that comes out of the ocean and the first bite of shark (was little breaded balls of shark meat) I thought the same thing.  I saw the lemon sitting there on my plate, and I decided to try the shark with a little bit of lemon, and that helped tremendously, and it was actually ok.  I don’t think I would ever try it again.

After dinner we went to the show, where we were able to watch a guy sing some big band songs and a few from musicals, he was a very good singer that got his start on the West End of London where Emily used to hang out as a study abroad student at least a couple times a week.  He sang one of my favorite songs from Les Miserables, “Bring Him Home”.  I thought he did a tremendous job, gave me goosebumps!

We were bound and determined to stay up past 10:00 to not be so “boring”.  Well, I made it to about 10:30 and Emily made it to 9:45.  I guess we are still pretty boring.  Tomorrow is a new day, and maybe then we won’t be so tired.  We will be in Puerto Vallarta tomorrow.  I think we are going to try and do something fun and exciting, like snorkeling.  Till tomorrow.