Cruisin'

This post may be long and boring for most, but I wanted to write down everything I could remember about our cruise for my benefit! Feel free to skip all the mumbo jumbo I'm writing!Mike and I were able to go on our 5th cruise to the southern Mexican Riviera last month. This was our 4th Carnival cruise. We cruised the Sapphire Princess our first time. My Mom and Dad and Mariko and Naomi were able to come down and watch our kids. They are so awesome to do this for us everytime!! Thanks so much! We have been really lucky that way!

We flew out of Salt Lake on a Wednesday morning after staying overnight at the Super 8 Tuesday night. Mike's parents decided they wanted to come with us too, even though they had just gone on the EXACT same cruise last year! Our cruise went on an awesome sale about a month before it was scheduled to leave and they couldn't pass up such a good deal! It was fun to have some company around. We played cards with them a bit and ate dinner with them every night.

So, we arrived safely in San Diego about noon. The plane did a weird thing when it was about to land. We had almost touched ground when the plane pulled up suddenly. We wondered what was going on. There was another pilot sitting just behind us, hitching a ride, and he said that planes do this all of the time. He said that there might have been another plane needing to take off ahead of us or the runway was just not available at that time, for some reason. It made people panic a little bit, but we just circled the airport and landed just 10 minutes after that. Crazy!

We hitched a taxi from the airport and we were at the cruise terminal in about 10 minutes. It was the best check-in process so far. It only took about another 15-20 minutes and we were up on the lido deck, enjoying the first of many gluttonous meals!

Then we were able to go to our stateroom. This is the first time we were able to get a balcony room. Since our cruise went on sale, we were able to upgrade our room. It was pretty nice. This is the view from our balcony before we set sail:

This is part of the inside:This ones' kinda dark since it was taken in front of the balcony doors:

Here's the view of the other end of our room:As we were getting ready to set sail, we were up on the lido deck and noticed something falling from the sky. It was a bunch of parachuters with colored smoke coming from their feet! Since we left on Veteran's Day, I think the navy ship next to us was having some sort of celebration. It was cool to see them fly and then land right on the navy ship.

Here's a view of downtown San Diego from the top deck of the ship, just before we shoved off:

At the muster drill. Some guys behind us were not enjoying themselves! Ha ha!

One of the many beautiful sunsets we were able to see. We chose to do late dining this time and we really liked it. It made us able to see the sunsets and have more time to play before getting gussied up for dinner.

Our first of many dinners in the dining room:

Our first towel animal of the cruise. It's a dog if you can't tell!

That was only the first day! The next day we had another day at sea. We hung out on the lido deck almost all day in the aft. It had a hot tub just for adults:

I had to get a picture of my pedi, lounging out on the balcony:

Our second towel animal, a froggie:

The next day we stopped at Acapulco. We didn't get there until noon, so we got up, worked out, and had a lovely breakfast on the lido in the aft. Here I am fishing a bug out of my drink:

Here we are, in Acapulco!

We went scuba diving in Acapulco. Here's the Acapulco Scuba Center who took us diving:

Here's their dock:

The inside of the scuba shop:Heading out to our dive spot with our ship in the background:

This is after our dive was all over and we headed back to our ship in the white van:I just got scuba certified only about a month before we left, so this was my first ocean dive. It was AMAZING! I can't wait to go again, only in the Caribbean. This water was pretty murky. You could probably only see about 30 feet in front of you, whereas in the Caribbean you can see more than 100 feet in front of you! It was still pretty cool though. We saw barracudas, starfish, sea snakes, eels, and a bunch of coral and a ton of fish. The second dive we went on ended up being a night dive. That was a neat, different experience. We each had flashlights and got to see a little octopus and a sting ray! AWESOME! We took some pictures with an underwater camera, but I still have to get them developed. I will need to get an underwater digital camera soon. Hmmm, maybe for Christmas?!...

Anyway, we got back to our ship in time to get ready for dinner. Here's our third towel animal, a gorilla I think!

Since we didn't get to Acapulco until noon, we got to stay until one in the morning. So after dinner we decided to go for a walk and do some shopping.

There was not too much going on, so we went back to the ship and checked out the karaoke lounge and then danced to the Philipino band in the Versailles Lounge. There were A LOT of pictures of naked people on this ship and many naked statues as well. This was Mike's favorite statue located just outside of the Versailles Lounge. Tee Hee!:

That was the first 4 days of our cruise, with only 4 more to go! Hopefully I can post those 4 days soon before the craziness of Christmas hits. Wish me luck! TTYL! :)