Back from our Cruise Good & Bad

Well we are back from our Cruise on the Norwegian Pearl….

Our vacation started off as a complete nightmare. First and foremost I came down with a nasty cold the day we left. By that night I was feeling very shitty. We drove to Albany after work, as we were staying over for our early morning flight. We went to Olive Garden for dinner, and were in bed by 9:30 or so. We woke up at about 5:00am Saturday morning for our flight. We get take the shuttle to the airport, and the when we check in our luggage the Delta ticket agent advises us that our connecting flight in Atlanta had been cancelled, and that were on the 1:35pm flight instead. Not really a big deal to us, we are only going have a 6 hr lay over in Atlanta. We finally arrive in Atlanta, and see it's snowing, and everything is icing over. I am not talking about little flurries, I am talking about the big ass snowflakes we get here in the northeast. In Atlanta even the smallest of snow flakes equals chaos. Needless to say countless flights were being cancelled, and it was just a disaster in Atlanta. I called my good friend back in Boston , and she and her husband (God Bless them) were trying to figure out for us if it was just better for us to rent a car, and drive down to Florida. We were looking at about an 11 hour drive time. We tried to get on the standby list to two different flights but there were about 130 people on each flight already on standby....we didn't have a prayer. We were finally able to board our new flight at around 2:25. We were suppose to take off at 1:35, and we had to wait for the crew to get a "bite to eat" we are already now an hour behind scheduled take off time at this time. They finally allow us to board, and there we sit on the aircraft for a whopping 4 hours on the runway!!!!! We finally take off, after de-icing, and being the 105th in line for take off. We arrive in Fort Lauderdale at about 9:00, get our luggage, and get a cab to take us to South Beach Miami. A 45 min cab ride later we finally arrive at our hotel. We get inside, and my ears and head at this point are so painful, and congested the guy at the front desk sounded like the Teacher from Charlie Brown and all I heard was "Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa we can't accommodate you tonight wa wa wa wa" I go up to Bob and say "What did he just say? They can't accommodate us?" Apparently a pipe burst and flooded that entire floor. Bob just looks at the guy and say's "You're kidding me right?" Then turns to me and says ok where the hell is Ashton we're being Punked right? Nope...we were shit out of luck. Apparently there was a big comedy festival in town that weekend, and every hotel in the South Beach area were sold old. We were screwed....it was raining, and a muggy 83 degrees a record high for Miami in January. After about 45 mins of my friend back in Boston calling hotels in the area, the guy at the front desk tells us he got us a room at a hotel down the street. We hail another cab, and tell him where we need to go, the man says he's never heard of the hotel. This can't be good.....they've never heard of it...oh lord. So we tell the guy to go ahead we'll figure it out...we are told it was right around the corner, yeah not so much. We hail another cab, and after 30 mins of driving around Collins Ave in Miami we find the hotel, however it's not at the address that the other hotel told us, and it isn't even the same name. The cab is now parked on the street, and the guy from the new hotel comes out and yells at him to just park his cab. Bob goes in to check out the hotel, and to him it seems ok. So we lug our luggage in. As soon as I get in the lobby I got a bad feeling...there were NO other people..no signs of life. So we get our luggage inside, the man tells us our room is on the 2nd floor, we head towards the elevator, and the man says oh the elevator doesn't work. We end up having to use the back stairs, and of course the man doesn't offer to help us with our bags. We make it upstairs, open the door, and the theme music from a horror movie starts to play in my head. The floors are disgusting, spots of mouse/rat feces I spot on the floors...we trek on to our room....Now I am in tears. God knows how many murders or whores had been in these rooms..I can usually rough it but there was no way in hell I was roughing it here. Needless to say we spent about 4 mins in our room, and hightailed it out of there. My friend back in Boston was able to get us a room at the Doubletree....THANK GOD!!!

So we hail yet ANOTHER cab, and make the 40 min trek back towards the port, and get to the Doubletree. At this point it's about 11:30 at night...we get in, shower, and head downstairs for dinner finally!!!

The next morning we get up early, have breakfast, and head to the ship..finally our vacation is going to go right. Well wouldn't ya know temps dropped down, and it was raining...EXCELLENT.

The Norwegian Pearl is the biggest ship in the NCL fleet, she was beautiful! 2 Pools, 4 Jacuzzi's and a huge water slide. There were 2600 total passengers, not including crew. We went to the sail away party for a little bit, and then headed inside to watch the Patriots came on the 40 foot yes I said 40 foot TV in the main part of the ship..it was packed. more Packers fans than Pats fans though. We went to dinner, and were in bed pretty early as we were exhausted. Our first night was good We went to Teppernaki (it's like a Bennihanna's) and it was so good! I wish I wasn't so sick so that I could have enjoyed it more, but Bob loved it, and was so happy...that was good enough for me. He had worked so hard in planning this trip, and I felt terrible that I was sick, and I didn't want anything more to happen on this vacation...then 2nd night nightmare hits again. Apparently we were buy a mechanical room, and at night all you could hear was this screeching noise, that bob calls the "retarded Teradactyl" so Bob wakes me up at 230 am and says he went to reception and they have one room left on the ship however it's not made up yet, and it's at the front of the ship (aka AFT) Me being a person who gets seasick this is not a prime stateroom for me. At this point I am in tears...I have been sick for 3 days at this point, very little sleep, and just not a happy girl. Bob ended up going to the new room, and I stayed in the old for the night I just didn't care I just wanted to sleep. I got about 3 hours that night, and reception calls at 8:00 and says if you want to move your room you have to do it now b/c we have guests coming on the ship in Cozumel and we need one of the rooms so we need to know what you want to do now. Mind you I was to be at my massage at 9:00 so now I have about 15 mins to pack all our stuff up and move it to the new room. Bob told me to just go ahead to my massage and he'd take care of everything. I get to my massage and the woman asks if I want to upgrade to the Hot Stone Massage for an extra $20.00 heck yes!!!!! It was the best $159 I have ever spent. I got back to the new room, and told Bob I spent the extra $20 and he just looked at me and said "honey, after the night we've had whatever you want to do today is just fine with me" It was so cute...he felt so bad, but it wasn't his fault how was he to know that was going to happen? By the next day we finally getting into the swing of things. We enjoyed the food on board, and were happy with the staff, service was slow some nights, but we understand how demanding their jobs are. We felt the cruise director lacked…he was just ok not to excited about anything, and just "I am here to do my job" type attitude. The Activities Manager was a hoot…he sounded just like the talking Gecko from the Geico commercials so that was hysterical to us. We also met the cast of "Second City" sort of a cross between SNL and Whose Line is it Anyways…some of the biggest comics started off at Second City. So we hung out with 2 of them until 4am one night that was fun. They were an absolute riot. Cozumel and Grand Cayman were great. We went to the Hard Rock in Cozumel which is the "Smallest Hard Rock Café in the World" and the Margaritaville in Grand Cayman was one of the biggest we have seen/been in. The last day on the Ship was an at sea day. There wasn't to much to do aside from shopping and Bingo and the Casino, which as one fellow passenger said is not one designed to win. There seemed to be a massive amount of small children on this ship too, more than we've ever seen on a cruise. That was fine, but sometimes it was just more annoying. For instance when you're trying to have a nice dinner for two at the restaurant, and the child at the next table over is crawling under the tables, over chairs, screaming and crying…umm hello…parents feel free to step in and tend to your child at any point now….

All in all this trip had it's good and bad…We would never do a 5 day cruise again it's too short, and we really feel we need a vacation from our vacation now. I am still sick, and have to really painful, and blocked ears still. What was important though was that Bob and I got to spend some quality time together away from the rest of the world., well for a little while anyways.

Oh and when we were at Fort Lauderdale aiport waiting for our flight back home, Fat Joe, and Terror Squad sat next to us...that was interesting..lol