Homeward Bound (January 16th, 2016)

Yesterday was our last day at sea, so we slept in, with no intention of setting an alarm. When we finally woke up, the seas were calm. It was definitely getting cooler, as we headed back north, and back into winter. So we enjoyed our final day at sea, and our final cruising companion.

Today we will end of our Caribbean Cruise with our daughter in the port of Galveston, where we started. We woke up this morning to foggy skies again as we made our way back into the port. The temperatures are probably in the 50's and it's cloudy.

Last night they gave us two options for disembarking. The first is called self assist, which is definitely the easiest option if you drove to the cruise terminal and aren't waiting on any particular transportation. It requires you to carry all of your bags off the ship yourself. The only problem with this option is that the elevators are usually pretty busy on the last day of the cruise and it's hard to handle luggage on the stairs. Self assist passengers are usually the first to leave the ship. 

The other option is to leave your bags outside your door the night before, and they will move them to the cruise terminal for you. With this option, they prioritize passengers by when their flights leave, to ensure that everyone gets to the airport in plenty of time. They give you a group number, and when your group is called, you can disembark. Since we were using Carnivals transportation to get to and from the airport, we chose to leave our bags out the night before, and have them transported to the terminal for us.

We got up at about 7:30, in order to be out of our room by 8:30, which is what they require in order to get the rooms ready for the next guests that will be coming in later in the day. We left our carry-on bags in our room and headed to breakfast. They had all of the usual breakfast options available, so we sat out on the back pool deck and enjoyed a nice quiet breakfast. 

The dining room on the Lido deck was really busy, but the back pool deck was nice and quiet. When we finished breakfast, we went back to the room and gathered up our carry-on bags, then returned to our table to wait for our group to be called. They called most of the self assist groups, and then our group was one of the first "assisted" groups to be called to disembark, so we made our way to the front of the ship. We scanned our Sail-n-Sign cards for the final time and headed off the ship and into the cruise terminal. Once in the terminal, we located our bags, which are sorted by debarkation group number, and got into the long line to go through customs.

They were forming two customs lines, so as we got in line, I looked at the other line to see who we were next to, and when we got to the front of the line, we were still next to the same people. The lines moved very evenly. 

We got through customs very quickly, but some of the people had to do finger prints, thumb prints and a lot of other stuff that we didn't have to do. The only thing I could think of is that they weren't U.S. citizens. I don't really know fully! It took about an hour to get through customs, then we were free to head out of the cruise terminal to our transportation. We were using the Carnival provided buses, so we picked up our bus tickets and crawled on our bus. We had to wait for about half an hour for the bus to fill up before we headed to the airport. 

We had a nice long wait at the airport since our flight didn't leave until 2:55, but everything went as planned, and before we knew it, we were on our way home. As we descended into Denver, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. Apparently it has been cold while we were away.

I want to take a minute to recap the gluten free dining on the ship, because it was such a positive experience.  Our daughter was never limited on her selections.  She was offered the same menu each night as we were, the only difference was that she reviewed the menu the night before so they would have time to specially prepare her appetizers, entrees and desserts. 

Houston always handed her the menu with a smile on his face, and never made her feel uncomfortable for needing special food.  And, I have to say, it was fun to see what the chef would do to make her request gluten free.  She said that it wasn't always what she expected, but it was always very tasty, and very much appreciated by all of us.

Leaving for Galveston (Saturday, January 9th, 2016)

We got about four inches of snow again yesterday. They say that’s what we should expect in an El Nino year, but not necessarily what we want. If we still enjoyed skiing, snow would be a great thing, but right now it just means shoveling, slow traffic and very dirty cars.

We made another phone change before we left on this trip. We paid an extra $40 to Verizon this month to have cell phone coverage from the ship and at each of our ports. If you have Verizon, you can call 611 from your cell phone and it will put you in touch with the international representative who will give you pricing for international travel phone coverage. We decided that the extra $40 would be worth it to be able to talk to our older daughter while we were away.

We left the house at 4:45 this morning for a 7:25 flight to Houston Hobby Airport. We will be boarding the Carnival Freedom later today for a seven-day cruise in the northern Caribbean. As we drove to Denver International Airport it was 21 degrees outside and some of the roads were still icy from yesterday's snow.  Security lines were longer than we expected, probably still the end of the holiday travelers.  

Our flight to Houston was completely full, and in fact, it was over sold, so they were asking for people to take a bump. Unfortunately that wouldn't work for us this time, but maybe another time.  The flight on Southwest Airlines was very good, and got into Houston about 15 minutes early. We landed at about 11:00 a.m. It was 55 degrees when we landed, so the temperatures are definitely moving in the right direction.

We are taking this trip with just our youngest daughter. Our oldest daughter started her “big girl job” on January 4th, and is getting her career off to a good start, and our son (in-law) is back in training in Georgia.

When we booked our Carnival Cruise, we purchased the airport to ship transportation option that they provide for $37 per person each way for about an hour ride.They had a check-in desk right in the baggage claim area at the Houston Hobby airport, which made it really easy. We checked in after picking up our bags, and then waited about 30 minutes for the rest of the bus passengers to arrive.

We talked to the Carnival representative at the airport and she said that a lot of people flew in yesterday and stayed at a local hotel, then caught the hotel shuttle back to the airport this morning in time to catch the first bus to the ship. We hadn’t thought of that, but might have to try it next time. They run three buses a day on arrival days to get people from the airport to the ship.

Once everyone had arrived, they walked us all out to the bus, which was a nice big coach bus. 

We told them that we wanted to carry our luggage on when we got to the ship, so they put it in a separate bay from the other luggage so it wouldn’t automatically be taken by the porters when we got to the ship. We appreciated that very much!  

The cruise lines typically handle your luggage when you arrive, and as quickly as they can, they deliver it to your room. Since there are thousands of passengers on the ship, this can take quite a bit of time, and until your luggage arrives, you don’t have access to it. So we prefer to just carry our luggage on ourselves and put it in our room. That way we have everything we need, and don’t have to wait on the luggage delivery people. 

We always enjoy seeing how different life is in different places. As we came over the bridge into Galveston, there were beautiful neighborhoods (on stilts of course) built right on the water, and in Galveston, it's all about oil. Everywhere you look has something to do with oil.  

Since we came straight from the airport and used the Carnival transportation, we got to skip the long lines and go straight through priority security and check-in at the ship. It was very nice because the main lines looked really long. 

 Carnival cruises are all inclusive except for alcohol, and alcohol can be quite expensive. We don’t drink a lot, but we do enjoy a drink here and there, so we always take advantage of the carry on wine policy that Carnival has. Each person over 21 can carry on one bottle of wine. If you choose to drink it with dinner, there is a $15 uncorking fee, but if you just drink it in your room, or around the ship, it is free to enjoy anywhere else on the ship. Just don’t forget to bring a corkscrew, although our housekeeping staff has helped us with in the past. 

The other thing we also always pack for a cruise ship (and hotels too) is extra hangars. We keep lots of metal hangars from the dry cleaners around just for this purpose. There is plenty of closet space on cruise ships, but never enough hangars.

When we got to our room, it was just as we expected it to be.

Plenty of room for the three of us for a week

Looking back toward the window

Cozy, but efficient!

After we got our bags to our room, we headed out to explore the ship a little it. All of the Carnival ships have basically the same layout, but are decorated differently. The buffet style restaurants are always open when you get on board to provide food to hungry travelers. This was a good thing for us today since we got up at 4:00 a.m., had a small breakfast, and really hadn’t eaten anything else since. We all found a little something for lunch at the Italian buffet.  We walked around the ship some more, but it was really cold and windy on the outside decks so we didn’t spend much time out there. 

The ships always do a safety briefing before they set sail, which varies by ship, but requires the passengers to report to their “muster” station. This is an area out of the side decks of the ship where the lifeboats are stored. They explain what to do in an emergency while you are standing out there. Since it’s quite cold outside today, we went back to the cabin and grabbed our coats before reporting to our station. This turned out to be a really good idea. There were a lot of really cold people huddled around trying to get through the safety talk. 

We each only brought one or two pairs of pants, so were hoping that as the ship makes it way south that it starts warming up or we’re going to be doing a lot of re-wearing.

After the safety briefing we found ourselves a nice, warm inside table from which to watch the sail away. 

Our daughter and I went out to the pizza bar to see if they had gluten free crust, and to our surprise they do. They made her, her very own, hot out of the oven gluten free pizza with any toppings she wanted. It took about 4 minutes to get her pizza. What a nice surprise! 

As we sat at our table, eating pizza and waiting for the sail away, we noticed a school of dolphins right outside our window. They swam around the side of the ship for about an hour. What a treat! I tried to get a few pictures, but only had a little point and shoot camera, so not much luck, but it was really fun to see them.

If you look closely, you can see a mama and baby jumping side by side

Galveston sunset

We prefer to have the late dinner slot, so that we are never rushed to get back on the ship after our excursion days. Our dinner time this trip is 8:15. We had time to go to the welcome aboard show before going down to dinner.  In the main restaurant there is assigned seating. We have been seated with another family of three. A mom, with her daughter and son from Freemont, Nebraska. They are really nice and about our age, so they will be fun to eat with each night. 

Steve had the vegetarian option, which is always Indian. Carnival usually has Indian chef’s, so the Indian food is always really good. I had grilled mahi mahi and creamed spinach and our daughter had grilled chicken and a baked potato. We all also had an appetizer and chocolate melting cake for dessert. Our daughter had ice cream since she can’t have gluten. 

From now on, our daughter will order a day ahead, and all of her meals will be prepared gluten free for her.  As we finished our dessert, they brought tomorrow-nights menu to our table, and she picked out all of her selections for tomorrow night, including gluten free chocolate melting cake. We are very pleased with how Carnival is handling her meals, and they do it all with a huge smile on their faces.

After dinner we went to the comedy club where we watched two really good comedians, Thomas Brown and Sheila Kay. They usually have good comedians on Carnival cruises, but we thought these two were exceptional. After the comedy club we all headed back to our room for some much needed sleep.