Thanksgiving Cruise 2011

We were lucky enough to get away for a five day cruise over Thanksgiving break, the week after Thanksgiving.  It was on a Carnival boat that left out of Galveston and went to Progreso, Mexico and Cozumel. Mexico.  Our boat is the boat on the left.

We went with three other couples that we have known for quite a while.  Although we have cruised before, we always went by ourselves.  It was fun to have other people to cruise with so that we could have others to talk to and to play games with and to eat with.  I feel like I got to know the other couples a lot better on the trip.

One night on the ship is formal night, when you get to wear nice clothes and the dinner is a little more formal than usual.  They have photographers set up around the ship that will take your picture so it is a good excuse to get Joe to take pictures with me.

Here are the women:  Candy, Cheryl, Kim and I.

Joe and I and our waiter, Ragu.  He was from India.  He was a great waiter and was very friendly.   He was from India.  The last evening we discussed a little about his life with him and he told us that he has a teenage son in India.  He works on the cruise ship (long hours with very few days off) in order to pay for his son to go to school and get a good job.  He plans to do it for about 4 more years until his son is out of school and then he can go home and get a job that doesn't pay as well, but be around his family.  He didn't tell us what his salary was, but he told us we would be shocked if we heard how low it was.  It was interesting to see how other people live.

The morning that we were supposed to dock in Progreso, the captain got on the intercom and informed us that it was too windy to dock at Progreso and the port authority had closed the port for safety reasons, so we didn't get to go there, instead we went straight to Cozumel and spent the night docked at Cozumel.  This was disappointing because we wanted to see the Mayan ruins that are really fascinating close to Progreso...maybe next time we will be able to go. In Cozumel, we were able to go to the beach and go snorkeling.  It was pretty windy and not very warm, but we went to the far side of the island and the sea was a lot calmer over there.  Luckily, two of our friends Buck and Candy were fluent in Spanish so they could converse with the cab drivers and tell us a little about the town and the areas that we were driving in. 

All of us at the beach, Brant, Kim, Buck, Candy, me, Joe, Travis and Cheryl

On formal night:  Brant, Kim, (front) Cheryl and Travis, me and Joe and Candy and Buck

 Just Joe and I (do you like my obnoxious ring bling?)