Cruise Reviews

This review is too long to fit in one review (it is 29 1/2 type written pages - over 16,500 words), so I'm breaking it into three parts. This is part 3 of 3 ...

March 5, 2012 – St. Thomas

Well, last night I did spend a few minutes on the Internet. I also channel surfed the TV. But mostly I just feel asleep. I guess I'm doing the early to bed early to rise routine, 'cause I woke up at 4am. Given the four hour time difference from home, that is about the time I would be going to sleep.

At any rate I turn on the TV to see where we are. We are 35 miles from St. Thomas doing just under 18 knots. At this rate we are going to be really early. I go back to sleep and wake up at 6am. Now we are three miles from St. Thomas and just now slowing down. We are going to be early. For the past three ports we have been right on time. This time we are going to be way early. In fact we are cleared to go ashore before 7:30am (we were scheduled to arrive at 8am).

As we are coming in off in the distance I see another ship and soon a third ship. We are first into port (if you don't count the two dozen yachts that are here – must be some sort of a boat show). The Carnival Victory docks behind us and the Adventure of the Seas docks behind the Carnival Victory. The Enchantment of the Seas and the Carnival Victory are both facing forward. So the Adventure of the Seas has to be different and backs in.

Just as we reach the dock it starts to rain. So I head back down to my cabin where I can get pictures of the Carnival Victory and the Adventure of the Seas coming into port. And just over the hill I can see the top of another cruise ship. That of course would have to be a Princess ship, as Princess does not dock in the same place as everyone else. Of course with only the top ten feet of the ship visible I cannot tell which Princess ship is in port. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that there are more than 10,000 visitors here today. The rain has stopped, so it should be a nice day, if a bit crowded.

My sightseeing tour leaves at 9:15am, about 45 minutes from now. So I'm going to get ready and I'll be back at you later.

The sightseeing tour was great. At our first stop we could see St. John and Tortola. I got some pictures and a bottle of cold water. At our next stop we had a great view of the Harbor. I got some great pictures and a bottle of cold water. Our third stop was the top of Crown Mountain, the tallest point on St. Thomas. There I got some good pictures of Magens Bay and a cold banana daiquiri. Then we stopped in town for those that wanted to go shopping and then back to the ship.

There is an Internet Cafe in the port area, so I went there next. 45 minutes cost me six dollars. This is about one fourth of what it would cost me on the ship and the connection was faster. On a side note, after two days of no remote access the ship's Wi-Fi is finally working again.

I return to the ship, put my computer in the cabin and go back out to do some shopping. I pick up a couple of bottles of two different alcoholic drinks, a shot glass for my friend and a couple of small items for me, then back to the ship. Of course I have to turn the two bottles in, but the person to turn them in to just walked away. I stand there like an idiot until an elevator becomes available and head up to the cabin. I'm not planning to drink in my cabin anyway. But really, how can you enforce a rule when the person responsible for enforcing the rule is AWOL?

At any rate it is mid afternoon and I am in danger of melting. So I hop into my bathing suit and head for the pool. I see the Adventure Ocean kids are sitting in the shade eating ice cream. I wonder how many arms the counselors had to twist to get the kids to agree to that activity?

After cooling down in the pool it is back to the cabin to change into my casual formal wear (it is formal night). It's just like my formal wear except I've got a Caribbean shirt on instead of a white dress shirt and tie.

As I'm working on this I notice the Carnival Victory is getting ready to leave and it is raining again. It raining when the Carnival Victory arrived, it rained when the Carnival Victory left and those are the only two times it rained today. Seems to me someone or something is trying to send the Carnival Victory a message.

The captain has just announced that all passengers and crew are aboard, so as soon as he finds the key we will be going. I see that the pilot boat has just returned from the Carnival Victory, so we should be going soon. It is a quarter to six and we are schedule to leave at 6pm. According to the captain, a speed of eight knots should get us into San Juan at 7:00am tomorrow.

The Adventure of the Seas leaves just before we do, and I do mean just before. Since the Adventure of the Seas backed in, all it has to do is move out into the channel and head out to sea. Meanwhile we are backing until we are clear of the pier and the captain can spin the ship. Then we two head out to sea.

Tonight is our second formal night and I'm going casual formal. First I find a couple of photographers for some portraits and then I head to dinner. I order two shrimp cocktails and one steak. I should have ordered two steaks. It was good, though a bit small.

Then it is back to the cabin where I get quite a scare. There is an alien wearing 3D glasses sitting on my couch watching my TV (the glasses are not mine; I don't know where the glasses came from).

Well, there is nothing terribly interesting going on, so I get up to date on everything (this, the accounting and my photographs). It is a good thing I upgraded my backup flash drives to 16GB, because I now have over 1700 photographs taking up over 8GB of space.

March 6, 2012 – San Juan

We are early into San Juan – too early. We pass the fort and it is too dark for any good pictures. Soon we make the turn toward the docks in Old San Juan and it looks like the Captain is going to back in. Great, my cabin will be overlooking the city and it will be facing north, so it will not heat up. But no, we just sit a while and then head in. Later the captain makes an announcement and explains that he was just waiting for the wind to die down before docking.

My tour was canceled do to lack of participation (what, I wasn't good enough?). I looked at the other offerings but none interest me. I did the city tour last time I was here. So I'll just walk around and see how much trouble I can get into. Perhaps I'll find an Internet Cafe and have a little fun.

All I did was take a few pictures and buy a few souvenirs. Someone else from this cruise went to Starbucks and posted that the Internet at Starbucks was slower than the ship. I returned to the ship in time to see the HAL Eurodam arrive. After lunch all the sun, heat and humidity over the last five days gotten to me and I took a nice long nap.

However, I was up in time to get some picture as we left San Juan. Next stop Baltimore. We are doing 19.2 knots uphill (look at a globe) and based on the information from the Travel channel, we only need to average 16.25 knots. The captain says that we will pick up the pilot at 8:30pm on Friday. We are scheduled to dock at 7am on Saturday.

Soon it is time for dinner and my waiter is taking good care of me. I order one shrimp appetizer and he brings two. I order one chicken dinner and he brings me a second one from off the menu (he wanted me to try it). For dessert I cannot decide between two desserts, so I order both.

Turns out I missed one important item in the captain's announcement. Apparently the show times were changed. I showed up for the production show at the published time of 10:30 and discovered that the movie War Horse was playing. Apparently my show time had been moved up to 6:30pm. Disappointed I returned to my cabin for some much needed rest. Then I have to get up at 3am so set my clocks back one hour. Why can't we have the time change at a more reasonable time?

March 7, 2012 – Day at Sea

I am up in time for sunrise, but once again the horizon is covered by clouds. Sunrise was a big bust. I couldn't decide what I wanted for breakfast, so I finally settled for pancake sandwiches. They are just like regular sandwiches except instead of bread I used pancakes. I had cheese, ham, bacon, salami and of course pancakes.

I was planning to have breakfast on my balcony, but that idea literally went flying out the door. Just as I stepped outside I watched as two salami flying saucers took off. I went back inside, replaced my airborne cold cuts and ate inside the Windjammer. The one good thing about the forward Windjammer location, it has great views over the bow while eating.

After breakfast it is time for a shower and since I am running out of clothing, I break into the laundry bag that came back from the cleaners a few days ago and put away my now nice clean fresh clothing. Assuming that we don't hit an iceberg, I should be good until I get home.

After updating my onboard accounting spreadsheet I decide to celebrate the $396 OBC I got by attempting to upload some more pictures to the Internet. Apparently even these one third sized pictures (I have to keep the pictures small so that they will upload in a reasonable amount of time) are being well received by those that read my posts.

There is an announcement that they are going to stage a crew only fire drill. A few minutes later we hear Bravo, Bravo, Bravo (the code for fire). The announcement includes a zone number and it is repeated that this is a drill for the crew only. Personally I think that if they want to make it realistic, they should have the passengers run around yelling and screaming (in other words, acting normally).

After that I head out of the cabin to give the room steward time to clean. Apparently he is not part of the fire drill. First I head to the Internet Cafe to actually post the pictures (I only uploaded the photos from my computer, I did not post them). Then to the store to see if there is anything new (there is not).

Then I decide to search for one of the passengers. I first saw him at embarkation. He was greeting all the shore side staff, so I assumed he worked for Royal Caribbean. However, as I saw him walk around the ship I realized that he was one of the passengers. Nonetheless, he knows everyone. Finally I overheard one of the crew members ask him how his birthday party was. He said what a great time he had and that the captain was there. At the past guest reception it was announced that they were recognizing an Elite couple who had the second most points on this cruise. Why the couple with the second most points? As a side note, apparently out of the millions of C&A members, only about 140 have made it to the Elite level.

At any rate I began to put together the puzzle pieces. This might be a very famous passenger that I have heard about. So I decided to hunt him down. I found him by the pool, saying hello to one of the crew members. I asked him if he was a famous passenger that I had heard about and he replied, “Guilty as charged”. His name is Jack, he is from Canada, this is his 152nd cruise, he cruises once per month, so he has been cruising for about thirteen years (as have I, but I am only averaging 1.5 cruises per year) and he knows all the crew members and Captains on all the ships. We talked briefly. It was nice meeting him.

I went back to my cabin, but the room steward was still working in the cabin, so I walked around deck five (the promenade deck) a bit, then headed up to the Viking Crown Lounge to enjoy the view for a while. While up there I suddenly noticed that EVERYONE was getting up from their pool side lounge chairs. There is only one thing that could make everyone leave their poolside lounge chairs at the same time – it’s raining.

So I head back to the cabin to update this. Last time I checked we had four to eight foot seas. Right now they are showing that stupid forward view cam which is showing lots of water drops, so I can’t get the current information which is far more interesting than watching water drops slide down a glass window. At any rate the ship is rolling enough that it is hard to walk straight, except for the drunks, they are having no trouble walking straight (HA HA). I was really challenged this morning as I was walking in the hallway and one of the crew was bringing a tray full of food to one of the cabins. That was someone I definitely did not want to accidentally bump into.

Well, the captain just made his noon time announcement. The closest land is about 3.4 miles away; however it is covered by 18,071 feet of water. The closest dry land is Grand Turk, about 195 miles away. We are 377 miles from San Juan and 1004 miles from Baltimore. We need to average 15.3 knots to be on time to pick up the pilot. We are currently going about 19 knots in an effort to put this wind behind us. Our starboard is being hit by thirteen foot waves which are expected to increase to eighteen feet by tonight. The air temperature is 77 degrees and the sea temperature is 81 degrees, which is the same as the pool temperature (which is being hit by my estimate of twelve to fifteen inch waves).

Things are starting to really rock and roll. A drawer opened all by itself. I had to lock my sliding door to keep it from opening. Every once in a while we get hit by a really big wave and the entire ship shakes.

So I decide the best thing to do is take some ginger, lie down and watch the Green Lantern on TV. Having seen it for free on the TV I am glad I didn’t pay good money to see it in the movie theater.

The captain made another announcement at 6pm. There are 40 MPH winds coming from the east. Current sea conditions are twelve to fifteen foot waves reaching fifteen to eighteen feet at night. We can expect rough seas until around noon tomorrow.

I’ve been taking ginger and knew the dangers of working on the computer while the room is moving. Motion sickness is caused by a conflict between the ears and eyes. While I am inside my eyes do not detect motion while my ears do. Looking at a computer screen on a rolling ship is like trying to read in a car. And sure enough, for the first time in nineteen cruises I got seasick. It was mild; I took some ginger, laid down and rested until dinner. At dinner I went heavy on the bread, two main courses of noodles and steak and no appetizer or dessert. After dinner I went back to my cabin and watched a little TV and then went to sleep.

March 8, 2012 – Day at Sea

Good morning. I don’t see any fish swimming past my bed, so I assume we survived. Last night was not as bad as I expected. This morning’s sunrise would have been perfect if the clouds were not on the horizon. The cloud cover overhead was perfect for a picture perfect sunrise. On some cruises I get great sunrise pictures and some, like this one, I don’t.

I’m going to take it easy this morning, as this afternoon I have been invited to two C&A events plus the Captain’s Corner is this afternoon, right after one of the C&A events (which means I should be able to get a prime seat).

Hopefully today I’ll be able to edit this and start picking out the pictures to include with my review once I get home and publish it. However, I have to be careful or I’ll get seasick again (and yes, I have already taken some ginger).

On the way back to the cabin from breakfast I saw Jack. I told him the bad weather was his fault, as the weather had been good until he told me how great it was. Five minutes later it started raining and the wind picked up. We had a good laugh after that.

I then went back to the cabin, grabbed my computer and went to the Internet Café to pick out pictures to post and give my cabin steward time to do his thing. At 9:30am I went up to the pool deck to check out the shirt sale. The two dozen people around the table were not as intimidating as the three dozen people in line to pay. I don’t mine a few accidental elbows to the ribs, but I’m not standing in line for half an hour afterwards.

So I sit down at one of the tables by the pool, in the shade and work on this. Yes, the sky has cleared up, the wind has died down, and it is looking like it is going to be a nice day.

I’ve returned to my cabin as it is hard to see the screen in the bright daylight. I finished picking out over half the pictures I’ll be posting when the captain made his noontime announcement. We have sailed 782 nautical miles from San Juan and we have 599 nautical miles to go to reach Baltimore. We have to average 13.9 knots to be on time. The reason for the slow speed is that he was going faster then needed yesterday to put the strong winds behind us. We are experiencing eight to ten foot seas now and he expects that to drop to five to eight feet tonight. There is over three miles of water below the ship.

Currently the weather is great and on my way to lunch I noticed the pool deck and the pool were full. In a few minutes I get to meet the stars (a Q&A with the singers and dancers of the production shows which is a special C&A event). Then after that is the Captain’s Corner. So, I’ll see you later.

I just got back from the Captain’s Corner. I asked the captain if there is an estimate as to when the engine would be repaired. He explained there are four engines turning generators which create the electricity that the ship runs on. Those four engines are working fine. However, the port side propulsion engine is only able to develop 70% of its maximum torque. As a result the ship cannot reach full speed. Thus, when traveling as fast as it can (under current conditions) some people will see a difference in the size of the wake from each propeller. There is an estimate as to when the repairs will be made, but it is not official yet, so he would not tell us what the estimate is. I also asked the hotel director if someone misses the ship, would they go into the safe to get the passport to leave with Royal Caribbean’s port representative. He said no, there is too much liability if they did that.

There were a couple of strange questions. One was from a lady asking why the beds were made up all the time??? That is what the room stewards are supposed to do. She goes on to explain her question. For a moment there I thought she was going to say she got out of bed to go to the bathroom and when she got back the bed was made. But no, her complaint was that the bed was not turned down at night.

Another complaint came from a gentleman who was unhappy that his brand of sugar (the one that comes in the yellow colored packet) was often missing from his sugar bowl, so he (I hope you are sitting down for this) had to ask for it (OMG!). However, he turned this rather simple question into the most complicated question I have ever heard. In fact at one point the hotel director had to ask him what was the question? This must have been a two minute exercise. From my point of view, asking the waiter or waitress or his or her assistant for the sugar should take less than ten seconds, meaning he spend more time complaining about the issue than it should have taken to ask for the yellow packet twelve times.

Really, how do some of these people survive at home? Pulling the sheets down so you can get into bed and having to asks for your favorite sugar are such big problems that you have to voice your concern in front of 500 – 600 people?

The show stopper came with the question about the lack of chocolates on the pillows at night. Apparently the company saved $1,000,000 by cutting out the mints and the hotel director pointed out that people sleeping on the chocolates were ruining the pillow cases. That is when the cruise director chimed in and said, "That wasn’t chocolate." I wish I had a picture of the face the captain made upon hearing that.

After the Q&A I spoke to the cruise director regarding the missed production show because of the schedule change. He said the printer made a mistake and that there were several announcements about the schedule change. Okay, but I didn’t hear any of them. No matter, it didn’t ruin the cruise.

After the Captain’s Corner I returned to the cabin to work on this and to pick out the pictures for posting with my review. Tonight is our third formal night, and I have a special guest party to attend prior to dinner, so it is time to get ready for tonight.

At the “Top Tier” event (platinum and above) the hotel director gave a brief talk about the history of Royal Caribbean International (RCI). RCI controls about 25% of the cruise market. While no names were mentioned, there is a bigger cruise line that controls 50% of the cruise market. Tomorrow at 2pm the cruise director will give a more detailed history of RCI. It should be interesting, so I plan to attend.

There are about 2,200 passengers on this cruise, few of which are children. The last cruise had over 500 children, as will the next cruise. Three of the passengers are Elite, about 50 are Diamond Plus, 200 are Diamond, 80 are Emerald and 300 are Platinum.

The loyalty ambassador made a big deal over the raffle we had for a bottle of Champaign. So after the event I suggested that she should have raffled off the ice sculpture also. She didn’t get the joke. Oh well, I’ve had jokes flop before. That is why I’m not giving up my day job.

I had a light dinner, one appetizer, one main course and one dessert. I gave my WOW card to my waiter. My thinking went like this. My room steward it great, but basically is just doing his job. Maryna went above and beyond, but I only spoke to her twice. My waiter is not only doing a great job, but is going above and beyond, so I gave him the WOW card. He was very appreciative. I’ll give my room steward an extra tip and write a letter to Royal Caribbean to let them know how great the others and the rest of the crew were.

After dinner I found a picture that was taken of me on the pool deck. The main reason I wanted it was because I was wearing my favorite cruise shirt. It shows a picture of a deer in a forest. Most of the trees have arrows in them. It says vegetarian, an Indian word meaning lousy hunter.

Then back to the cabin to finish picking out the pictures for posting. Tomorrow I’ll prepare the pictures for posting (cropping where needed and reducing the picture size from sixteen million pixels down to about eight hundred thousand pixels (a typical monitor can only display about two million pixels).

So until tomorrow – good night.

March 9, 2012 – Day at Sea

Once again sunrise was a bust. The horizon was blanketed with clouds while there were almost no clouds overhead. So, I update this and then get ready for breakfast. After breakfast I’ll return to the cabin to work on my pictures and charge the computer’s battery. Then I’ll leave the cabin with my computer to continue editing the pictures so that the cabin steward can do his job in peace. After that we will see where my whim takes me.

Wow, how fortunes change. At 6am I was looking at a clear sky while waiting for the sun to rise. It is now 9am and there is no sky in the clouds. It is raining pretty hard, hard enough in fact that no matter which direction I look, all I see is water and clouds.

Currently the captain and the hotel manager are having a cake decorating contest. The hotel manager is doing much better than the captain, yet for some reason the captain is getting more votes. There is quite a crowd and all seem to be having fun watching. This is all going on in the Centrum. I’m in the Internet Café which is on deck eight just off the Centrum editing my pictures.

I stop by the store again. The shirts that were not sold yesterday are on sale for the same price today, without the crowd. I find two that I want.

After the captain’s noon announcement there is an International Parade of Flags. Each country that has a crew member on board has its flag represented.

After that I grab lunch. Soon it is time for the multimedia presentation of Royal Caribbean the early years (from 1968 to 1998). Basically it covers the formation of Royal Caribbean through the building the six Vision class ships (it ends prior to the building of the Voyager class ships). It is actually quite interesting.

After that unfortunately I have to return to the cabin and pack and fill out the customs form. This is where the spreadsheet comes in handy. It makes filling out the customs form a lot easier. Next I organize things. I’ll finish packing after dinner. Packing to go home is a lot easier than packing to go on vacation. All I have to do is take everything and throw it in the suit cases. When I’m packing at home I use a check list to make sure I don’t forget anything.

At 6pm I went to the photo shop to pick up my Cruise in Review DVD. I note there is a sunset with color, so I rush back to the cabin, drop off the DVD and grab my camera.

I got some half decent pictures. I’m sure that if I was twenty minutes earlier there would have been more color. At any rate while I was outside I noticed two things. One, we are no longer in the tropics. It is less than 54 degrees outside (about twenty degrees cooler than the last ten days). The second thing was that a Coast Guard helicopter flew over us. My first though was, what is a helicopter doing all the way out here? Then I remembered that the captain mentioned in his noon time announcement that we were 32 miles from Cape Hatteras, so I guess we are well within the range of a helicopter. We are supposed to pick up the pilot today at 8:30pm (I do not mean the pilot of the helicopter).

Soon it is time for dinner. I order one shrimp cocktail and one steak. My waiter recommends two shrimp cocktails. Good idea, so I order two. When the steak comes not only is it a good size, it is the second best steak I've had this cruise (the one in Chops was the best). So when my waiter asks if I want anything else, I order another steak. It was just as big (probably about ten ounces) and just as good. There is Key Lime pie for dessert. I ask what color it is. My waiters says it is white. I tell him if it is green it is fake (not really Key Lime) and if it is yellow it is real Key Lime. He thinks it is yellow. I decide to take a chance and order the Key Lime pie. It was yellow. My waiter also brought a second desert for me. I don't know what it was, but after one taste I decided it was too sweet for me.

So, back to the cabin, update this and edit more pictures. Then, since I have to get up early tomorrow (to find a good hiding place where they will not find me until after 4pm) it is good night folks.

March 10, 2012 – Debarkation

I wake up very early and while lying in bed suddenly notice that the cabin is lit up by something resembling a headlight. After realizing where I am I decide to check it out. It is just a very bright stationary light on a bridge. I check out the travel channel, do the math and quickly figure out that we are going to be early.

When I wake up again I decide to get up and look out the window to see what is up. My first thought is that the ship passed very close to a buoy. However, I know we are moving and that buoy is not getting further away. I soon figure out there is a boat following us. I decide to get out my camera, go outside and take a picture. It is a tug boat.

Eventually I notice an orange glow toward the east. It is looking like a great sunrise except for one very important missing item, there are no clouds overhead.

We are scheduled to arrive at 7am. At 7am the captain makes the announcement that disembarkation will begin soon for those doing self disembark. So we are docked in Baltimore. The TV says the air temperature is 54 degrees; however the captain says it is 34 degrees. I believe the captain. I can handle 54 degrees with no problem and it feels cold even to me. Otherwise it is going to be a beautiful day (perhaps for those getting ready to sail – not for those going home).

Unfortunately for me, I have about a ten hour wait until my flight leaves. Oh well, better safe than sorry, and besides, I don't have to go to work tomorrow (Sunday) so I don't really care how late I get home.

So now it is time to reflect back on a great cruise. Having spent most of my time on newer ships, I can tell this is an older ship. I am not referring to the condition it is in, it looks fine. But rather from a technical side, the TVs are not interactive, some of the public spaces are smaller than on the newer bigger ships, most of the rooms have the older and smaller CRT TVs (I'm in a JS and it does have a bigger LCD TV) and other little issues that don't really subtract from the cruise, but rather catch me by surprise compared to what I am use to.

The crew on the other hand had to be the most helpful crew I have ever had the pleasure to sail with. Any problem I had was solved by the person I spoke to. As I said, my room steward, waiter and head waiter were great. And even the people at guest relations were fantastic. I just cannot say enough good things about how helpful the crew was.

The cruise itself was great. The only negative is the first and last day which can be a bit chilly. However, that didn't bother me; I chose this cruise because it was twelve nights. The regular itinerary would be something I might try again in the future. As to staying really late in Antigua and St. Maarten, it didn't work out as well as it could have. The problem is that most of the places around the port close down around 5pm. So if the ship only stayed until say 10pm that would work out just a well. Not having to rush back to the ship was a big plus, but we were unable to take full advantage of the late departure.

Cruising in February has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that while still hot in the Caribbean, it is not terribly hot like it is when the sun is directly overhead and beating down on you. The disadvantage is that until you get south of Georgia it can be a bit cool. Of course for those that want to avoid the cold all together all they have to do is cruise out of San Juan. It is warm to hot year round once you get that far south.

I was a bit concerned about hitting six (scheduled) and five (modified itinerary) ports in a row. But by not trying to do it all at each port I had the chance to do what I wanted and was able to enjoy myself.

Well it is 7:35am and the announcement for those that are self debarking has been made. Unfortunately it will soon be my turn. Until then I’m in my cabin editing pictures and updating this.

Well, it is 8:15am. My room steward came in to thank me and I thanked him. There was another announcement and I have a feeling they are running a little head of schedule. Fortunately I just finished editing all my pictures. So I just have to finish proofing reading this and I’ll be all set for when I get home.

Well, I was wrong; they were running about fifteen minutes behind. Nonetheless, once they called my number I just kept walking. There was no line. All customs wanted to see was my declaration. A cab ride to the airport and now I’ve got a six hour wait until boarding. This is the main reason I bring my computer, to give me something to do for long layovers. In fact the ship will leave before I do. Of course had I booked the earlier flight the ship would have been late and I would have missed my flight.

I finally made it home at 11:30pm (PST) on Saturday, March 10, 2012. Of course since I had been running on Eastern Standard Time for the last three days (and an hour earlier for prior nine days) my body thought it was actually 2:30am on Sunday, March 11, 2012, which of course it wasn't, because we are moving our clocks ahead one hour at 2:00am on March 11, 2012. So not only am I dead tired, I loose another hour of sleep to boot.

Well, after three hours of sleep I am wide awake because I have been getting up at 6am on the ship for the last two weeks, and my body thinks it is now 6am. I am currently uploading my pictures so that I can post the photographs with my review. From home it takes me less time to upload six full sized photographs than it did to upload one photo from the ship, and those photographs were one third the size of the photographs I'll post with my review. And for those that are interested, I took over 2200 photographs during the two weeks.

The full album (I'll add more photographs as time permits) can be found at ...
http://community.webshots.com/album/582473910oWTIxI