Monday, Jan 3, 2005
Gulf of Mexico:
This was our first "Fun Day at Sea" according to the itineary. Basically, we spent the day sailing from the Mississippi to the tip of Cuba, across the Gulf of Mexico.
The weather out at sea was pretty warm, and got warmer as we head south. Leaving New Orleans it was about 75 degrees, partly cloudy, and that's what most of day 1 was like. There were scattered showers out there, but for the most part the boat was sunny. The only drawback was that it could get quite windy. There were 30 knot winds at times, plus the boat was traveling at about 18 knots... so the wind had a tendancy to swirly around on the deck pretty good, but not enough to make it feel cold.
My day of traveling and drinking, plus the stress of boarding the boat caught up with me finally and I just slept in till like 11 am on Day 3. Plus there isn't much to do on the boat when you're not at a port of call... 'course that's the idea. Everyone else spent the morning lounging around the sun deck, or in the spa.
The afternoon was more of the same: eating at the buffet, drinking (which was pretty much a perpetual constant thoughout the trip), laying in the sun, sweating in the spa...
That night was the 1st formal dinner, the Captain's Welcome Aboard dinner. We all dressed up and hit the main restaurant.
Dinner was *much* better the 2nd night. We guessed that the 1st night we're actually eating the left overs from the previous week's cruise since the food was not at all on par with what were were expecting. The 2nd night (and later dinners) were much better.
One trick with cruise eating: at the dinners, the cruise ship is stocked with enough food taht everyone can actually order one of each appitizer, once of each salad, one of each entre and one of each dessert. Of course not many people can eat that much, but most of us ended up ordering like 2 or 3 appetizers and 2 entries at every meal.
'Course some things aren't on the menu... like Glen's snack of butter off our waitress's hands.
After dinner we hit the casino and Glen, Dan and I threw the bones at the craps table. I played a single roller, who didn't seven-out for like 45 minutes and ended up walking away up $400. The only time I've ever really won any money gambling... but don't worry, I ended up giving it all back to Carnival eventually.
Day 3 Cliff notes:
Lots of sleeping, lounging, eating, spa-ing, followed by a formal dinner and a good night at the craps table.