We drove 4 hours this morning to get from Austin to Galveston. It does bug me a bit to rent a car and promptly drive it somewhere and park it. Eh. Turns out it was the most economical way.
However, economy and cruises certainly do not go hand in hand. Dear me. Everything is astonishingly expensive and very little feels included. Sure, we have a bed in a room that by Cabinn Scandinavia's standards feels like a presidential suite (read: a bit cramped with the two twins, couch, and walk of shelves/cabinets). Using said hotel as a reference, the ship's bathroom is probably at least 3x the size of the bathroom at Cabinn. I wonder what Scandinavian Cruise Ships are like.
Getting on the ship is somewhat similar to getting onto a plane, except both more and less annoying. You can bring non-water and non-alcohol on (i.e. shampoo), there don't seem to be size limits on luggage. But there is a similar rigamarole in checking in and going through security.
Once on board, the sheer size and population of this floating hotel-boat was a bit much. It felt very crowded, and my patience was thin. We ate lunch one deck below our room, and I discovered that the watered-down drip (''normal'') coffee is free, but the real stuff goes for semi-standard prices ($2 for an espresso). Waiters flit around, trying to get you to buy overpriced drinks. A woman near us asked them if they sold bracelets (i.e. for unlimited alcohol). Nope.
Our timing was awkward and we ended up sitting in the room and waiting for the announcement for our safety briefing. Think: ship-is-sinking drill. After this exciting exercise----really: we had to walk down the 6 flights of stairs, and decided to walk back up as well, which really winded my dad---well, after this I ran some errands, mainly finding the gym (sweet location, lots of windows, includes a dry sauna). We had a sit-down dinner which was well enough. I had escargot as my starter. As others have said before me, anything drowned in butter and garlic is delicious. There was a pork steak for the main and a nice gateau for dessert, which included both cherries and ``kirschwasser'' (is this a type of alcohol? If not, it's amusing since it just means ''cherry water'' in German). Over dinner, we learned that the boat has ~3000 guests, and 1000 of those are children. Our dinner companions (we were seated at a 4-seater table with another group of 2 people) were complaining about the sheer number of kids on the boat and said there weren't as many kids on Royal Caribbean.
Post-dinner involved some discussion of excursions -- so, the boat will pull into two ports. Progresso and Cozumel. Which gives 2 chances for us to spend large amounts of cash. Cozumel is clearly the more touristy of the two. Progresso has a lot of crazy old Mayan ruins and Cozumel has (wait for it--) Discover Mexico! A Mexico ``theme park'', including some informational videos and ''amazing replicas of some of Mexico's most important landmarks, buildings and archeological sites''. I read this as ``We acknowledge that (real) Mexico is dangerous, and are giving you a disney-fied version''. We decided on an outing for Progresso, but couldn't make a definitive choice about Cozumel, so I bought tickets for Progresso. We (technically) have two days to stew over it.
Yes, Kirschwasser is cherry brandy. I know this because last week it came up in the book I was reading about WWI in Freiburg. Unlike wine and beer, it wasn't subject to rationing and production slow-downs until late in the war.
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