Every year, around Christmas/New Year, Syn and I get together to celebrate in some form. I also take the chance to visit Vix and Xaa while I’m there, so it’s a bit of a family get together as well.
This year, we decided to do something a little different from our standard hang around the house New Year. Syn and I went on our first ever cruise to the island of Cozumel, Mexico.
Cruising is something that’s popular among my co-workers, and apparently more popular than I knew. It’s fairly inexpensive for what all you get, and an experience that I’m glad I had.
This was also my first time leaving America for a foreign country. So, I had to learn about getting a passport and all the things international travel holds.
I just got back in town two days ago, so I’m still trying to get things organized after being away for over a week. I wanted to at least blog some pictures I took and share a little of that cruise experience with you all!
We left the country on Jan 4, when it was far colder than it usually should be for the year. The first day was pretty chilly on the ship, so things like water slides and pools weren’t widely used until we got further south.
Ship Features
That’s right! The Lido deck had two water slides…
Fountains… a pool… several hot tubs…
The ship also had a walking track, spa, mini golf, entertainment halls and this pretty amazing space in the middle call the Atrium.
I had no idea these ships contained so much. And this is just scratching the surface.
There were always events and entertainment happening. You downloaded an app that gave you a schedule of what was going on, and what was to eat for dining every day.
Oh, yeah. The food. Nonstop food.
FooooooD
I just want to say, I want to hug whoever thought up the Pizza Pirate, where you can get pizza 24/7.
There are many buffets through the day, and then the Your Time Dining in the big dining room during the evening, if you want something fancier.
Aaaaand free always room service! We had to try it once.
Speaking of rooms…
The Cabin
We got a cabin with a larger window. Not a balcony and not a porthole. I think this was a good choice.
We somehow ended up with the very back cabin on the M floor. It had its own… personality. Like the “tweeting” TV stand (we fixed it by readjusting the TV position) and a squeaky-creaky floorboard right in the middle of the walkway, which we affectionately named “The Plank.”
We spent a good deal of time alternating between doing stuff and napping in our cabin. It was so chilly at times that we could only hang out on the deck for so long before we needed to come inside.
But once we got to Cozumel, we were looking at weather in the lower 70s, and a bit of rain.
Cozumel
Cozumel is a little island off the east coast of Mexico. It was an important religious site for the Mayans, and we spent time on an excursion to visit Mayan ruins.
We also spent some time in the shops near the port. It was still Christmas there for them.
We also got to meet this cute little guy. It’s known as the Cozumel Island coati.
We had a neat bus ride around the town while on the excursion, and even stopped by the beach for a short bit.
Here’s some of the cliffs off the coast — they are apparently very sharp and very slick after the rains… but there were still people walking out there on it.
Towel Animals!
Last but not least, the towel animals!
So, it took a while to wrap my head around the fact that everyone on the cruise staff was there to make your time there fun and pleasing. Basically, they were there to serve. That’s a little odd to me, but that’s the mentality of a cruise, so I rolled with it.
The cutest things, though, was that every day after housekeeping came in, they’d leave us with these towel animals. Like this:
They even provided a class on how to fold your own towel animals and a show called Towel Animal Theater. 😉
So, yes. This is where I’ve been and why this blog went quiet over the New Years. I hope that everyone had a great/relaxing/fun time as well!
I’ll get back to the regular gaming blog content soon enough!
I went to Cozumel a LONG time ago… I guess it was like 1983 or something? I loved it. I wanted to run away and live there. Back then it was still fairly unknown in the US. People from the US went to Cancun, people from Mexico went to Cozumel.
When we were there, they were just starting to excavate some ruins in the middle of the island. We rented a broken down VW bug and headed there. There was nothing there but a clearing. Met some “local” who offered to give us a tour. We figured it was just some dude trying to make a buck, but we said sure. He spoke Mayan, we spoke English, we both spoke a little Spanish so communication was interesting.
So you’d walk down a path and suddenly there was an ancient stone building. It was so cool. Felt like we were really discovering it. It was only near the very end of the ‘tour’ that we finally realized that what we thought was a random dude was actually one of the archaeologists working at the site!!
Anyway, one of my most treasured moments of the trip. Other than that, I remember hanging out at a tourist bar called Carlos and Charlie’s and having little kids try to sell us Chiclets constantly. (On another tour, the guide showed us a chicle tree which was apparently where the gum in Chiclets came from.)
Anyway sounds like you had a great time. I’m glad. I hope it’s as chill and inviting a place today as it was when we were there. Locals were so nice… I still kind of wish I’d run away to go live there.
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Oh wow, how lucky for you! That sounds like an incredible experience!
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Sounds like a fun trip!
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We had a great time and learned a lot about what to expect from cruises in the future! 🙂
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Sounds like fun! Glad you enjoyed it!
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Yeah, we’re certainly going to go on another one of these again!
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That’s awesome! I’m glad y’all had a good time. Cruising is fantastic! Funny how you just got off of one and I’m about to take my tenth. Did you know the ice cream bar is also 24/7? Cause that’s where I usually am XD
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Oh yeah! The 24/7 ice cream bar. That was good, too! It was just a tad too cold to enjoy it aside from the one day we were in Cozumel. But on the warm day we had, I took advantage of it, too! 🙂
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