vacationpalooza
In honor of our upcoming 20th wedding anniversary, I took my wife on a cruise from New Orleans to Cozumel this past weekend. We went on this very same cruise (except on a different boat… or ship. Whatever you’re supposed to call it). And last time, we were chaperoning a group of high school seniors, along with a few other adults. Not that we were chaperoning the few other adults, but this time it was just us. And 3,298 other passengers. And 1,100 crew members.
What I had forgotten was how boring it gets after the 2nd day… if you don’t drink, smoke, gamble or have a penchant for contracting skin cancer, your options narrow down pretty fast. All that aside though, it was still nice to be away and not have to worry about being on any kind of schedule (except for getting on and off the ship/boat at the appointed times… that’s pretty important right there). The best parts of the cruise were sailing down the river and back up. At least there was stuff to look at.
Cozumel was pretty challenging. Normally there are one or two other boats/ships/vessels in port at the same time, but because of Hurricane Alex, the boat/ship/vessel/ocean liner out of Galveston couldn’t make it, so the shop keepers really hammered hard on us poor schmucks that did venture past. I think we should have signed up for the zip line excursion instead. Didn’t see anything about that in the stuff we had to choose from. Zip lines would have been pretty snazzy though. We had a pretty good cruise director, not to have been Julie McCoy. In fact he sort of inspired me to want to be a cruise director. I told my wife I could do what he does. It was a lot like getting up in front of a (very VERY large) room full of youth and making wisecracks. He had the best one liner of the weekend… he asked if there were any Canadians in the room, and went on to say how much he loved Canada… “My uncle was stationed there during Vietnam.” The second best one liner was from one of the Cuban cigar vendors in Cozumel…
Vendor: Look! I got Cuban cigars!
Me: I don’t smoke.
Vendor: Today’s a good day to start!
Well, maybe that’s a two liner. Anyway, the pics should be finished uploading to Photobucket in just a minute, and then we’ll commence with the posting.…….
OK, this was a big hit on Facebook… here’s our cruise video…
Pre-cruise… we drove around our old N.O. neighborhood after checking into our hotel. Still a loong way to go. 5 years later, some have been rebuilt….

and some have never been touched…

Had no idea how dangerous cruising was. This Coastie never took his finger off the trigger… actually I told the wife to stay out of sight, and they eventually gave up and went away.

One of my 2 favorite cities… downtown New Orleans from the top deck shortly before getting underway…


Lido Deck: water slide…

Miniature golf…

…Jumbotron (bonus points if you recognize this movie)

Headed down river past French Quarter & Jackson Square (Jax Brewery in center of pic, St. Louis Cathedral to the right of that)…

The Industrial Canal empties into the river…

Lower 9th Ward (obliterated by post-Katrina flood waters; making a comeback).

Does that make you crave some sugar or what?

Every evening, turndown service. They left a different towel creature every night. Name that creature:

Friday night…

Saturday night (WARNING! risque photo)…

Sunday night (I have no idea)…

Our view of Friday night’s show (best seat in the house??)

View from touristy business district in Cozumel…

You can NOT get away from these people…

4th of July on the high seas… Old Glory waving above the bar on the lobby deck (OK, not so much waving…)

For whatever reason, these eyeball thingies played heavily into the decor theme onboard… creeped me right out…

Sunday night… at the mouth of the river!

After it got too dark to take pics in the channel, I got bored and cranked the exposure to 4 seconds and drew my initials with this star (maybe it was a planet… it was pretty bright). I stuck them together in panorama mode…

Monday morning… after finally getting Guest Services to remove charges for mixed drinks we didn’t buy (or drink), we disembarked, got picked up, ate breakfast and went down to the Quarter for a bit…


She shoots… SHE SCORES! Only Mr. Pibb on the boat. Went to IHOP for breakfast, asked for Dr. Pepper. Got Mr. Pibb. After that, she was on a mission…

There are few things finer (or worse for you, than fried fat and sugar, filled with more fat and sugar)

Omm Yomm (Actually, I’m auditioning to be a hand model, my fallback plan after the Children’s Home career is kaput)…

Last one… Just stitched together these 4 pics from Sunday evening. Most breathtaking view of the weekend (and panoramas are just awesome like that)….

If”n you wanna see all the pics, go here.
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