Thanksgiving morning, our first non-scheduled day, we set an alarm to get up at 9:00 am. It felt like 3 in the morning. I hauled myself up on my knees to say prayers, and the next thing I know Natalie says "Alaina! You were supposed to get in the shower an hour ago!" Bottom line: We were exhausted. I can't remember the last time I was so exhausted. It seriously rivaled newb0rn-month exhaustion. I'm not complaining, I'm just painting you the picture of how unusual this "vacation" was, where we arose before 6 am most days on top of jet lag. Thus, Thanksgiving morning (uh... mid-day) we leisurely got ready, wandered down to the Pizza Bar (more on that to come) and then explored the beautiful city of Palermo, on the Island of Sicily in Italy.
We shopped for clothes, tried on boots, and asked in numerous pharmacies and makeup stores for "Dermablend" (miracle scar cream not sold in the U.S., we never did strike gold), and overall felt sort of like dumb blundering Americans. At least I did. The... uh... distaste? for us was evident. We got Gelto #4 and took a celebratory Thanksgiving photo. We also found our first internet in 6 days at a little bar where we paid .75 euro for 15 minutes. Well, Natalie paid .75 euro, I paid 2. Because I didn't notice the little timer that clicked up to 16:30. Oops.
On our way back to the boat we count random encounter #4 of G&G in an unlikely and unplanned for circumstance. You can see our deck there - #9306.
Just for history's sake, the other encounters #1 - on the stairs to the Monte Carlo casino, #2 - on a tour bus in a city of millions of people in Rome, #3 - in a little town on the Amalfi coast.
What do you do on Thanksgiving? Hanging out with family and doing a lot of nothing (or snoozing) is high on our list. We got to fulfill this tradition at least. While Natalie dozed I stole her camera and practiced my self-portraits. I need to get me one of those. See Palermo behind me.
And then: Formal Night! The much-awaited, much-agonized over formal night. All in all everyone looked spectacular and it was really fun to people watch.
Observe: My Thanksgiving dinner. Wonderful turkey, Sad everything-else.
Observe: Nat's Thanksgiving dinner. With a side of cheeseburger & fries. She looks happy.
After dinner we meandered over to the boat's casino, where Grandpa gave us each a ten and said to get playing. We passed up the penny and nickel slots for the big-time money quarter slots. For a long while it was lose, lose, lose........ and then I started winning. And winning. 96 quarters is a lot of money! Especially when you add 47, then 36, then 68 quarter wins on top of it. Due grabby hands trying their own luck with my stash I don't know exactly how much we won, but I did walk out of the casino with around $50. (No pictures, but the next night I turned $5 into $30.) I sort of like that casino playing. Especially when it wasn't even my money to begin with :)
After expending all of our energy on slots, we hit up the pizza bar on our way back to the room. Any of you who have been on cruises know their amazing all-you-can-eat-anytime amazingness. This pizza bar was our favorite, complete with rotating desserts and the hot chocolate & soda bar nearby. Most days or nights we ended up spending some time here, at least to bring food back to the room. Which always got eaten, no matter how full we were.
This fancy shcmancy boat had mirrors on the ceiling all over the place. Here are two different attempted ceiling pictures. I laughed when I found Nat's because I had no idea she took one, and I know she had no idea I did. Last picture on the right is one poor example of the ship's main gathering area. It's a lot like a mall. And you can see me randomly standing on the right - I didn't know Nat took this one, either!Backtracking: First day on the boat. Here's our deck. And here's Nat and Gpa reading "the bible" of the boat - every night this itinerary of the next day's activities would appear, and we would religiously examine it for things to do, times to be places, etc. They piled up, too, so it became a joke of "Day 3? I need Day 6! Why do we have this crap laying around here?"
We did the mandatory boat drill and traipsed to deck 4 in life jackets with every other body on board. It always makes me think of the Titanic.
Not pictured:
The matching Coca-Cola souvenier cups that we never used. We paid the $7/day for unlimited sodas, but ended up getting paper cups from the bar - 4-5 times a day. We do love our drinks...
The last 1.5 days of rocky, rocky seas. It was so up-and-down that it was impossible to walk in a straight line, and we were constantly dancing around to catch our balance. (Again, a big shout-out to Nat for bringing the Wal-Dram).
The amazing hot tub that I had every night to myself. I could never talk anyone into going with me, until the last night whenNatalie finally came. As luck would have it the water was lukewarm, hurricane winds were blowing, and the boat was rocking violently enough to spill water out of the tub with every swell. Sorry Nat! I promise it was amazing every other night.
How someone was always asleep before 8:30 pm. First half of the trip it was me (still recovering from Shingles exhaustion), second half of the trip it was usually Nat.
Our hilarious, gut-splitting-from-laughing-slash-crying conversations with G&G. They are just so funny. We're so funny together. I loved being with them.
One more day to go! Barcelona, here we come!
