Sailing the Gulf

-DAY 2, At Sea [Gulf of Mexico]-

Sunday
6 Nov 2016

Oh man, it's one of those days where I really don't want to write the blog, I want to sleep! We have an early shore excursion that leaves in less than six hours.

So I was hungover this morning and slept until like 10. It was technically 9 but the ship doesnt change time until tonight so we've been confused all day. Anyway, Elaine & I got ready and made it just in time for breakfast.

Our rooms are on the seventh floor out of 15, the ship is the largest cruise ship Celebrity has right now, the Celebrity Reflection (we learned that at trivia). Dad & Lisa, then Elaine and I, then Brian & Ashley. All three rooms have a balcony and they're open so we can sit out there and talk.

Unfortunately the weather was crappy so no laying out but I went up to the deck after breakfast anyway to sit in the wind and read. After about thirty minutes of trying to feel better I gave up, came back to the room, and took pills. Saw Ash & Bri so we decided on a shore excursion for tomorrow in Cozumel, a three reef snorkel, and chit chatted for a while. Then I took a nap, migraine eventually went away. I was probably hungover because I ended up slamming so many drinks in a row when talking to drunk dude.

Got up around 330 and we went to 4 o'clock general knowledge trivia. It was HARD. We got 7/15 😂.

I'm going to try to do a comparison review of the two cruises when I get home and see how that works out.

After trivia we had to get ready for formal night. We met at the Sunset Bar and took some photos, and then some other things happened that I will tell you about in a later blog entry. 😉

Dinner was awesome, we went to one of the specialty restaurants, Tuscan Grille, and they had some really delicious bruschetta followed by some okay gnocchi and interesting polenta fries. Dessert was the bomb, I got spumoni donuts! Pistachio donuts, cherries, and vanilla gelato. The cherries were amazing. Also ordered Brian a Limoncello Cheesecake while he was out vaping so that I could taste it. The buffet is the best place for Ash to eat, she's vegan, but I'm interested to see what the dining room will do as they do have a special menu if they're made aware of your dietary needs. I'm definitely impressed and glad that vegetarian fare is readily available.

Dinner lasted forever but I love the fancy dinners so I don't mind. Miss my girl EP for sure, we had some great cruise dinners & conversation! They had a crab cake on the menu tonight so I thought of her and the legendary crab cake 😂😂😂

We went back to the room and changed and then headed to Celebrity Central for "The Marriage Games." It was basically the Newlywed Game but with a logo modeled after The Hunger Games. Liam, part of the activities team, lost his voice so Maarten, the activities manager, who is from Belgium, hosted. That seemed like far too many commas.

The show was HILARIOUS. They had a couple in their 40s, one in their late 50s early 60s, and one probably late 70s early 80s. The eldest were wonderful, so adorable, Don and Mary - married 57 years. They took the women away and asked the men questions. The first question was, "Which one of your wife's friends would you most like to see in a bikini?" and Don says, "Do you mean now or 50 years ago?" PERFECT. So when they had brought the women back out Mary literally word for word says THE. SAME. THING. We erupted. The second question was, "If your wife's family had a facebook page, who would you 'like', who would you 'block', and who would you 'poke'? And for 'block' Don says, "Her brother George, he's dead but you can never be too sure." Mary's immediate response to the question was, "alive or dead?" We erupted again. He tells her either or, she gets the like right and then for block she says, "that's the dead one." Just great. The final thing was the men had 12.5 seconds to draw their wives and Don's like a fucking artist with a profile of Mary that's so great. Maarten was pretty quick to with the wit so it was very good banter.

Next they took the men away and asked the women questions, the last one is, "When is the last time your husband 'parked the car in the garage'?" And since I can't gesture like I did I'll use the Newlywed Word, "make whoopie".

So since the movie Mary chose (from multiple choice options) to describe her and Don's love life was, "Gone With the Wind," Maarten didnt feel comfortable asking her that question so he asked her where the most romantic place was and her response was, "The Beagle Club." Of course all of us are confused and she explained it's where you take your beagle dogs, then she said it was 58 years ago and said something about how the car died and they had to push it so now I'm wondering if she thought he meant literally the most romantic place they parked the car LOL.  Anyway, it was pretty funny and when Don came out he took four guesses, the first three were all pretty funny and the fourth was the beagle club so of course we all went ape shit.

After that we got martinis from the martini bar, a midnight snack, talked some more on the smoking deck since it was empty, and then went to bed.