Cruise: May 19, 2006 (Friday)

Embarkment

So I went on a cruise last month. We went on Carnival cruise lines which is the cruise line I think everyone and their mom sails when taking a trip down to Ensenada. Literally. I went with April, April's mother, and April's mother's friend Darlene. Believe it or not, it was really, really fun :)

I took a half-day off at work so I could leave by 2PM and make it to port by 4:30. The drive was nightmare-ish. Traffic, plus the street I needed to take to get to the parking structure was freaking closed. I panicked and kept driving, hoping for the best, and by some miracle managed to locate the structure after only one wrong turn and one u-turn on a hideously busy street.

My luggage was so f-in heavy thanks to my monstrous laptop. I had to carry it down 3-4 flights of stairs after parking. April's dad dropped the other three off maybe 5 minutes after I got to the bottom floor. We tagged our luggage and went through security then began the fifty-jillion mile trek to the boat. We FINALLY reached the boat and had our photos taken (I think they were associated with our cards) and tried to get on the elevator so we could go to our rooms. We entered the ship on the 7th level and we needed to get down to level 5. It was a madhouse...they were doing some sort of safety drill with those who arrived earlier so hoardes of people were going upstairs with life vests. The elevators were packed and we couldn't seem to get one that was going down. Some idiot told us that the elevators on one side only went up (I don't know what he was talking about). We finally gave up and took the stairs.

Paradise

April taking photos of her mom and Darlene

April and I had one room and April's mom and Darlene had one next to ours. I believe our room was M-17. After dropping off our stuff and deciding not to go to the safety drill thing, we decided to take a look around the ship. On our way out, April and I met one of the guys on staff...Mohammed was it? He was the guy who was going to take care of our room for the duration of our stay. Nice guy. Anyway, we ended up at the buffet-style restaurant on level 10 (?) where we got a little food/drink. I think we were sitting up there when the boat started to move. We sat up there and people watched for a while. The only two people I remember clearly are the drunk guy who was trying to dance with a group of strangers and some girl in a one-piece jumpsuit type thing...and man she had the huuuugest booty EVAR I mean baby had back and she was shaking what her momma gave her with a vengeance. Darlene said that she was suddenly reminded of "that song...that Laffy-Taffy song" haHA!

Anyhoozles, I think we wandered around the ship a little while longer before heading back down to our respective rooms. We chilled for a bit, got changed, and then headed up to the Normandie with April's mom. There was a booze-tasting...some sweet drink that involved kaluha and milk or something. We hung out around there for a while since we had time to kill before dinner. After Darlene came up we decided to go to the 7th floor bar (you can see a birds'-eye view of the bar in the photo above). Drink prices on the ship were super a-ok. We got some copies of the ship schedule for the evening so we knew what we wanted to do for the rest of the night. After the bar we went to sing karaoke in one of the lounges...April and I sang some Sherly Crow :D

Dinner was at 8:30PM. We met our waiter for the duration of the trip..."Luci" which was short for something. I have to look at his nametag again. For the rest of the night (and following nights as well) he would call Darlene and April's mother "Darling" and "Mami", respectively. Anyhow, I had a glass of wine with my dinner and was buzzing quite nicely by the end of dinner.

We went back to the room to change before going up to Club Rex ;) On the way down, some drunk dude (I assume he was drunk) who passed on his way upstairs as we were going downstairs looked at me and said "Mo-shi mo-shi..."

wtf

Look at how neatly everything is folded...! I wish I had someone to do this at my apartment.

Anyway, we got back to the room and discovered that Mohammed had folded the clothes I had thrown on my bed and had folded an elephant out of towels which we found on April's bed. Too awesome.

I changed into jeans and the four of us headed upstairs to the club. We got in and got some drinks. April's mother drank half of her screwdriver and left April and I standing at the bar holding her drink as she and Darlene went to go dance. After standing at the bar for a few minutes longer, trying to figure out why we were left holding drinks instead of being out on the dance floor we went out to where Darlene and le mom were and April told her mother that she had to hold her own drink because we wanted to dance too at which point April's mom (who I think I will refer to as the Mom from here on out since "April's mom" is a bit cumbersome) downed the rest of the drink in under 30 seconds and resumed dancing.

We all danced for a while before we left to go check out the comedian at the Normandie. As we were leaving some really short guy with sunglasses (and when I say really short I mean he was really short...I was taller than him in my 3.5 inch heels) stopped me and said "I just have to know, what [ethnicity] are you?".

"Japanese"

He paused for a second. "Moshi Moshi".

WTF

We went to the 18 and up comedy show and couldn't figure out why it was so tame...until we realized we were an hour early and watching the (very) g-rated comedy show. We waited for another hour to see the adult show, but in all honesty he wasn't that great. I think we went back to our stateroom after this and just went to bed.

Day 2 coming later :)