Jen - I have to steal our blog.

It's attached to my email address...go figure.

Easier to blog than email – for those of you that haven’t been on a cruise, if you remember dial up – you understand why!

Happy Honeymooners!!

So many things…

I’ve decided that going forward we will be taking pictures of all the food that we are served so I can give you a visual to go with the narrative of the atrocities of mankind we are being fed. “Fine Luxury Dining” we were just told was what they call it. By our Cruise Director. Who does not know how to speak into a microphone so it sounds like, perhaps, freestyle rap instead of an announcement. We were talking at lunch today about how incredibly awesome it would be to have Gordon Ramsey on this ship. But then we realized that he may self combust or have meltdown so intense that he ends up in a coma or just some other kind of unresponsive state and that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the world.

We are also dealing with an outbreak of Norovirus in addition to the swine flu concerns. What that means to those of you that have not cruised is that at every turn, you are accosted by a cruise employee toting a spray bottle of ‘hand sanitizer’ but we don’t really know what it is. And you are forced to sanitize your hands regardless of whether or not you are carrying your own purel or other sanitizing option. So we have some dead skin going on – it’s attractive. But so far we have no apparent infections. Go Fight Win.

So far – what we have learned is that no matter what cruise line you are on the people are equally ugly. There is no shortage of banana hammocks, bejeweled hats and other bejeweled accessories, unfortunate swimwear decisions; and a quite impressive, amazing array of man jewelry. I mean – we did leave from Boston which may as well been Jersey, but my God – I will have to see if I can start capturing that on film as well.

The band is called Marais or something, but what they really are is an Asian version of KiKi & Si.Since not everyone was a part of the auditory assault that was KiKi & Si; perhaps Jobin or Courtney can drudge up a memory as my memory has been seared by the sound of Marais. I’m working on finding Sound on Sound, but I can only take on so many battles each day. Sorry for the lack of explanation to you non-cruisers, Jobin/Courtney owe you an explanation.

What we are up to…

So we had two sea days in a row followed by Samana today. The sea days were nice, the first day I got impossibly drunk (imagine that…) and spent too much money at the casino (imagine that…)Aaron busied himself immediately becoming the Minister of Navigation and he can tell you at any moment of any day where anything is and what the most efficient route to get there is. It’s handy. The next day – post recovery – we lounged and ate at the French restaurant which is not The Olympic, but it was fine. Decent food and decent service, which is more than I can say for the rest of the staff which have their own personal definitions of freestyle service.(Jobin – I can guarantee you would not be able to hang on Norwegian. I may charge you a small fee for my trouble here. It’s like some kind of espionage, really…) Then we went to the cigar room and smoked cigars and drank cognac. I felt very manly.

Anyway, unfortunately I couldn’t find my Kindle before I left so I am bookless, which could in theory impair my lounging ability. I went to the library the first day and got The History of Loveby Nicole Krauss which was excellent for any of you book readers. Aaron is reading the new Dan Brown book. Tomorrow is Saint Thomas which will have an English bookstore - so all is well.And last night we watched a movie after eating in the cafeteria – a.k.a. the main dining room.Yeah.‘Feats of Glory’ is what they served, but you may have had it at the local OCB. But I can’t even attempt to explain without pictures, so more to come. So we watched ‘The Proposal’ which was terrible, but entertaining none-the-less. Someone was just telling me about that movie and said it was cute – which it was – but I thought Aaron had maybe died since his eyes glazed over to such an extent. Aaron has also taken to openly and shamelessly mixing his own drinks right on the pool deck – it’s impressive. The Sigg bottles of vodka were the way to go for future reference. Oh, and on the first day during my drunken casinoing I earned enough points for free drinks in the casino – so I have that going for me.

Aaron rockin’ down the kiddie pool slide!

So Samana today – it was something. Much like we were warned by Madelyn’s Bob & Deb – very very poor. We wondered around for awhile and then Aaron bartered with some dude to take us via moped rickshaw to a waterfall. Also – there were two other ships ‘in port’ even though there is no actual port. There is a dock – Aaron thinks the dock on Lake Ida is bigger than this. So we got in at 11 but after the world’s hottest tender ride got into the town around 1.There was standard issue crapazite to buy at the three stores, and a lot of people trying to sell us seashells for a dollar – mostly children – very reminiscent of China. Madelyn – I did find your coffee, so we were successful on that front.

We took a moped rickshaw to this waterfall where we were greeted by our guide who took us into the jungle down to the waterfall. It was really cool – I took video of this plant called a mimosa (yes, like the cocktail) that shrinks into itself when you touch it. It was amazing. We saw banana trees, cocoa trees, orange trees, plantain trees, various other trees and wildlife and a lot of stray wild dogs (which was really sad.) Then we went to the waterfall and back and the guide – who we planned to tip - informed us that we owed him twenty bucks, which was a bit of a surprise, but was fine because we did make it in and back intact. Then we took our terrifying moped rickshaw ride back to the boat and here we are!!!

And so…

So far so good. We are having a great time – tomorrow we are in Saint Thomas where we have a lot of various things to buy – mostly related to bleach and bleach wipes. Oh and black socks since that was the one thing I forgot so Aaron looked extra stylin’ in his suit with his white socks. And Louis Vuitton. So tomorrow will be a good day.

Back to lounging we go!!!