You Know the "I Love it When We're Cruising Together" Song? Totally NOT Sung by Captain and Tennille.

School mornings at my house generally go something like this, "JAIDAN!  Finish your breakfast!"  "Jaidan!  Brush teeth!  Wash face!  Now!"  "Kyan, if you're going to go with me to take Jaidan to school you have to put your shoes on."  "Sh-CRAP! I haven't made your lunch yet, Jaybird!"  Chaos.  It doesn't matter how early I get up.  It's always like that. Always.  Which is reason numero uno that I write blog posts in advance and set them to publish around 8:00 a.m.  Except for yesterday's entry?  I forgot to hit "publish" and Blogger, well, it doesn't really read my mind so it didn't know to publish the entry.  Totes putting the blame on Blogger.  Anyhow.  You can check it out here if you're so inclined.  You never know, there might be something really amazing in that entry.  Like a giveaway for a car.  Or, you know, me ragging on the new Arkansas coach for not knowing how to call the Hogs.

 

Okay.  Now that that is out of the way let's get on with the show!

 

Since this is (probably) my last post about our cruise, I feel the need to bombard you with pictures I haven't shown yet.

 

Like these:

 

And these! Towel animals are, like, the third best thing about cruises.  After, you know, the FOOD on board and the ability to purchase duty-free liquor.



I also feel the need to tell you a few things that might have been missed/ skipped over/ forgotten about in previous posts:

1) We sailed the Carnival Elation out of New Orleans.

 

The Elation is a little bit older in terms of Carnival ships.  And there was - for real, not making this up - a murder on the boat several years ago.  HOWEVER.  I would totally recommend this ship and this particular cruise to anybody.  We had a great time.  The boat was clean, the elevators worked, our room was the perfect size for the two of us, and the staff was above and beyond in terms of friendliness. 

 

2) I have a sun allergy.  You can add that to my list of reasons why Life Ain't Fair because, really?  Why couldn't God/ the universe/ whoever inflict a sun allergy on a Cullen-wannabe and leave me be?  I first discovered this allergy during a 2009 trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama, when I broke out everywhere my bathing suit didn't cover.  Since then, I've broken out a little bit the first time getting into the sun each spring/ summer.  Nothing near as bad as what happened in Gulf Shores.  Then this trip happened.  I broke out a little while we were in Progreso, was fine while we were in Cozumel.  On our last day, while we were sailing through the Gulf back home, I laid out for an hour.  I went in and realized I looked like I had some sort of communicable disease!  It was so disgusting that I had to change what I was going to wear that night.  What.the.eff.  I've come to the conclusion that the Gulf sun really, really aggravates my allergy.

 

3) The sunset leaving New Orleans:

The view we had made me wish I knew how to use - really use - my Big Girl Camera!





4) Speaking of New Orleans.  Let me tell you about what happened before we got on the boat.  We should have had plenty of time that Monday morning to explore the city.  And by "explore the city" I mean eat beignets and go to the French Market to get alligator sausage on a stick and pick up some crawfish bisque and maybe have a sammich at Mother's and top it all of with a hurricane from Pat O's.  However, due to a comedy of errors that would take way too long to try to explain, we ended up running behind (such is life with my husband) and . . . and . . . and . . . guess where I ate brunch that Monday.

Just guess.

CHIK-FIL-A!

I KNOW!

I was in the Food Capital of the World and I ate overpriced (but, OMG, so good, so long since I had any) hate chicken from a mall food court.

5) Speaking of New Orleans again, when we got back from our cruise on Saturday we had every intention of staying a night.  Had a hotel room booked and all that jazz.  Then we went to eat lunch at Frank's.  Frank's is my favorite restaurant in New Orleans.  I love their muffalettas and the crab stuffed mushrooms and their pepper sauce is to.die.for.  I was so excited to introduce Eddie to it.  Our food was great but the service was seriously so incredibly awful.  Like, no words for just how awful.  Like, we always tip no matter what we just left the server a buck and she really didn't even deserve that.  After eating, we wandered around the French Quarter and Bourbon Street a bit.  It was really, really, WAY crowded.  I think that's just how those parts of NOLA are but, frankly, we weren't in the right spirits for the crowds.  We missed our kids, too, and decided just to head home that night.

6) Anytime we told someone we were from Memphis they responded just like this: "MEMPHIS!"  If I hadn't already taken my make up off I would totally do a video blog of just how exactly they said it.

7) We really, really enjoyed the comedy shows on board.  For the life of me, I cannot remember the names of either of the comedians but they were both pretty darn good.  One had awesome material and the other was best when interacting with the audience.  I wasn't sure what to expect with cruise ship comedy but we saw four different shows (two comedians, two nights) and enjoyed all of them very much.  My only complaint was that the last show the last night on board didn't start until 11:45.  This at the end of a five-night-cruise!  Yeah.  I was sawing logs by 11:45.

8) I LOVE karaoke but it's hard to encourage my husband to sit (suffer?) through it.  We did catch a Michael Jackson contest one night and it was SO FUNNY.  Loved it!

9) Corona is really good after you've thrown back eight or nine rum punches.



10) I can't wait to go again!

Re: The Title of this Post -- Come on!  I can't be the only one who didn't realize "Cruisin'" was a Smokey Robinson song.  In my defense, the title totally sounds like something a group with "Captain" in the name would sing.  And, also, it was released the year before I was born.  AND I'm pretty sure most of my knowlege of the song comes from that dumb karaoke movie with Gwynth Paltrow.  SO THERE.

Let's Talk About Food, Baby. Let's Talk About You and Me. Let's Talk About the Good Things . . .

People go on cruises for one reason, right?  To eat.  I  mean, I'm sure there are people who go to see the ports and possibly to relax and maybe just for the whole cruise experience.  But I'm pretty sure that 99.9% of people have one thing in mind when they step on those boats: FOOOOOOD.

I am the 99.9%.

My goals for the cruise were to eat and to sleep.  And I did not disappoint myself.  Oh boy, did I live up to those goals.  I took a nap every single day and the very first thing I did when I got on that boat? I ate!

See?

FOOOOOOD.



Let's talk about that first meal for a minute here.  We ate at Tiffany's, which is a buffet, on the Lido deck.  They were making burgers and also had a Mongolian grill on the deck but we headed inside where the buffet was set up with Italian favorites.  I had some super delicious penne pasta, discovered that eggplant parmesan can be the bomb(dot)com when I'm not the one making it, and ate my weight in this onion frittata bread.  We didn't always have the best luck with the buffet but on that particular day?  Oh yeah.  So good.

We skipped the buffet for our evening meal every night and ate in the main dining room.  We were offered three courses for each meal, an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert.  My kind of dining.

Now, the first couple of nights we restrained ourselves and only ordered one of each course per person.  After that though?  No holds barred.  We saw a couple of apps we wanted?  Ordered them both.  Wanted two or three main courses?  So what?  Too bad we didn't think to order more than one of each course on lobster night . . .

Cheese plate (this is actually included on the dessert menu but I decided to try it for an app).  The bleu cheese was *holds nose* but everything else was pretty much delish.

Fried shrimp -- I'm from Arkansas.  Ya'll done KNOW I liked this

Fried alligator (I almost typed fried alligator balls but didn't want anyone to think I was ingesting reptile testicles) - Meh.  I've had better allligator in Memphis.

Frog legs - Better than the ones I had in Chicago a few years ago but still not great

Sushi - decent

Tiniest crab cake ever - Delish!

 

Lasagna Bolognese - Oh mayyyyyyne.  Good stuff.  So good.

Lobster tail, shrimp, and mashed potatoes - I'd had lobster bisque before but never like lobster lobster.  Mostly because I would see the prices and think "aw, hell naw."  But given that I'd kinda already paid for this lobster (in my cruise ticket price), I knew I had to eat it.  It was super good!  It also meant I was able to cross something off my '40 List.'  I KNOW!  Who puts "lobster" on their 40 list?

Fried fish and shrimp with curly fries and onion rings - Again, I'm from Arkansas.  Draw your own conclusions.

Veal parmigana, cheesey potatoes, grilled zuchinni and onion - The veal was probably my favorite main dish of anything we had on the entire cruise.  It was delicious!  I was disappointed in the potatoes and, not to sound like an asshole, but the way I make zukes is much tastier.



 

This was a five night cruise so there was, of course, another meal.  For some reason I didn't take a picture -- I suppose I was too busy diving headfirst.  My main course that night was pork loin with mashed sweet potatoes.  The pork was really good and, crazy thing, I really don't care for sweet potatoes but those were mmm mmm MMM.
 

Baked Alaska - absolutely DELISH, best dessert of the entire trip

Melting chocolate cake - I had this twice.  The first time it was super good; the second it wasn't quite as good.

Can't remember the name of this chocolate cake - It was okay

Cherries in Brandy sauce with vanilla bean - Yum, yum, yummy -- there just wasn't enough of it!

Sugar free Coconut Cake - Hands down, the ickiest desert we had of the entire trip.  Yick.

 

Believe it or not, I took NO pictures of breakfast or lunch!  Breakfast was pretty much the same whether you ate in the dining room or at the buffet.  It was really good but by the end of the trip I was pretty much over omelettes and big hearty breakfasts.  We tried the buffet for lunch one day - it was American food, fried chicken and the like, and we were both fairly unimpressed.  I will say this for the buffet, though, burgers and fries at midnight?  Ahhh.  Come to Mama.

There was a "chocolate extravaganza" the last day on the boat.  Extravaganza was kind of a stretch.  It was lame.  With extra lamesauce.  What you see pictured is a piece of chocolate cake, chocolate covered donut, chocolate covered banana, and chocolate pudding.  The cake was delicious.  The rest was meh.  You know that cheap Easter chocolate?  The kind you can buy a bag of at Dollar Tree?  Yeah, that's what the chocolate covering the banana and donut tasted like.  And the pudding had a coffee flavor and, well, I don't like coffee.

I can't write an etnry about food without including a tidbit on the resort food we had during our excursions.



 

Those chicken nachos came from the Corona Beach club in Progreso and, it may have had something to do with the open bar, but they were absolutely fantastic.  Like we killed them within two minutes and were fighting over who would lick the plate.

 

In Cozumel, our excursion included a buffet.  It was advertised as "Mexican favorites" or something of that nature.  I was expecting, well, Mexican favorites.  Not BBQ chicken and grilled mahi mahi.  It was really good food though.  Eddie ate a ton of the BBQ chicken and I was all about the fish.  The fries were a little meh and the ketchup had a weird flavor.

 

And that's a look at the grub we threw down on on our trip! 



Oh Mexico, It Sounds So Sweet with the Sun Sinking Low

Our cruise stopped in two different ports in Mexico.  The first was Progreso.  For the record, there are two or three Progresos in Mexico and this was NOT the one on the border.  It was, however, a different world from places like Cozumel and Cancun.



When we were planning the trip, I perused message boards to find the best things to do in Progreso.  I figured that we could ride a tour bus into town where we'd find some shopping and then meander on down to the beach.  While on the boat, though, we decided to book an excursion and ended up doing the Coronoa Beach Party.



Best.Idea.Ever.

For two reasons.

First off, OPEN BAR.

Second, Progreso is . . . well, like I said previously, it's not Cozumel or Cancun or any other crazy touristy place.  It is Mexico.  Every police officer we saw (and we saw several) was armed with a machine gun.  Honestly, I wouldn't have felt safe if we were "on our own" and not with the excursion. 

Our tour guide was a guy named Alan and he was awesome.  He and the driver of our (air conditioned) charter bus took us on a little tour of the city before arriving at the beach.  We were there two weeks ago today.  As we drove around the tiny little town square, we saw people putting up Christmas decorations.  Yet it was nearly 90 degrees outside.  Alan informed us that it was winter there and most of them thought the weather was cold!  I KNOW!  To me, it was Heaven.  I love me some 80's and I love me some beach.

Now . . . Progreso.  It is on the Gulf so the beaches look more like what you'd find in Texas or Alabama than the crystal blue water and sugar white sand of the beaches.  We didn't spend much time in the water.  We mostly soaked up the sun, enjoyed that fabulous open bar, took advantage of their free wifi (!!!!!), snacked on nachos and some super delicious pico, and made friends with a couple there who had the good fortune of being from Arkansas.

I cannot say enough nice things about the Corona Beach Party.  If you ever take a Carnival cruise to Progreso, this is definitely the excursion to book.  It was relatively cheap ($40 per person) compared to other excursions and especially with everything involved.  The drinks were good, the food was good, and the staff was great.  There were different beach games but none of the high pressure "must do this, must do this."  It was just . . . it was great.

Once we arrived back to the port area of we hit up a few shops and I discovered that there is no way I can ever, ever hate on Progreso:

That's right!  Them bitches know where it's at!

WOO PIG SOIEEE!

It Was Like a Really Good Zac Brown Band Song - Featuring Jimmy Buffett - While it Lasted

I'm a big believer in positive thinking.  Attitude is everything right?  If you go into something thinking that it's going to suck then chances are, yeah, it's gonna blow.  When we were in California over the summer, I wanted to eat at Del Taco.  I'd eaten there when I was pregnant with Karis and OMG BEST TACOS EVAHHHH.  I had to try them again, you know, just to see if the euphoria over the tacos was pregnancy-based.  The kids, however, wanted Taco Bell and were being total brat-faced a-holes about the whole thing.  We went to Del Taco and they'd already made up their minds that they weren't going to like it.  And guess what?  Yeah.  They claimed not to like it.  (Not that you really care a whole lot, but they were definitely not OMG BEST TACOS EVAHHHH but they were better than Taco Bell.  End of story).  Their attitude totally set the the tone for the meal.  It's like that with most things in life.

Going into this trip I was trying my best to be cautiously optimistic.  I wanted to go in with a positive attitude that we'd have a great time but I also didn't want to have the trip so built up in my mind that the actual event couldn't begin to compare to what was in my head.  Optimistic but also realistic. 

And . . . in the end . . . we had such a super great, fabulous, awesome time.  On the way home, we were listing the good with the bad and it was like the two lists didn't even begin to compare.  We weren't even out of the Mississippi River and into international waters when Eddie was proclaiming that we would, most definitely, be cruising again.  (Now, who wants to keep my kids so we can go?!?)  Things only got better from there.  It was just an all around awesome trip.  I've been really fortunate in that I've been able to travel a lot this year and, I've got to say, this trip -- just me and the husband, no kids (though I did miss them so much that we came back a day early!) -- was quite possibly the best.  That "the best" might also have something to do with a couple of open bars . . . just sayin' . . .

I will write more about my trip in full next week.  This week is turkey and dressing and pie and Black Friday shopping and football and the kids and I are going to spend a few days with my family.  Sort of surreal considering last week I was toes in the water, ass in the sand.