First(s)

(clicking on the above photo, dear readers, will guide you to an open Facebook album. You can look at it even without a FB account.)

I've been writing and re-writing this blog post for the past five hours and I am not really sure how to tackle this. I guess I am not very good at writing up blog posts about things that span several days where lots of things happened. (See the blog posts about my trip to France a year and a half ago... oh wait, you can't... I didn't write them.)

I think this is perhaps why taking pictures is more valuable to me during these times than trying to sum up four days of lots of things going on. I can talk about pictures but trying to hit details overwhelms me and makes me write not much about a whole lot.

This is what I will say: The cruise had a lot of firsts for me. Boats, food, mini-golf in 30+ mph wind, white sand and clear water, Mayan Ruins, wild iguanas, comedy club, and Lisa's 28th birthday. (Some might even joke that reading outside in the sun was a first)

The service was great from Carnival Staff members, my cruise-mates were more than a little strange, and the amounts of alcohol consumed onboard blew my mind. (I can't even drink that much WATER in a day, how do you suck down that much alcohol?) I kept hoping that the sampling of people on the cruise was not a single serving of what the USA is all about. I'm not going to say that cruising was bad, I think in a lot of ways it was a cheaper option for Lisa and I than staying in a hotel for the same amount of time and feeding ourselves at nice restaurants for three meals a day, plus a snack. Plus we didn't need to do that much planning. It came down to not really needing to plan a bunch of stuff that we got to do anyway. We had a good relaxing time. Lisa made a comment that this is the longest we have been on a vacation together since our honeymoon without family around. (We love you family)

I think it's something I would do on occasion, but I don't think you'll see me landing any "frequent flyer" discounts with a cruise line anytime soon. (Especially as most places you'd need to fly to to start the cruise, we just drove.)

I hope you enjoy the pictures because they tell a pretty good story about what we did. If you have questions feel free to ask.

Back on the chemo train tomorrow.

~B.