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| Tom ordered frog legs! He never ceases to amaze me! |
Here’s our cruise itinerary for the upcoming week…
Carnival – Carnival Liberty, departs 4/13/13
7 nights Day Date Port or Activity Arrive Depart
Sat Apr 13 Miami, FL 4:00 pm
Sun Apr 14 Half Moon Cay, Bahamas 9:00 am 5:00 pm
Mon Apr 15 At Sea
Tue Apr 16 St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Wed Apr 17 San Juan, Puerto Rico 7:00am 3:30pm
Thu Apr 18 Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos Islands 11:00am 5:30pm
Fri Apr 19 At Sea
Sat Apr 20 Miami, FL 8:00 am
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| Hazy downtown Miami only minutes ago as we prepare to sail. |
After our fourth night of little sleep, with the constant thumping of the disco music blaring from the bar below us, we’re exhausted and feeling run down.
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| Supplies to be loaded onto the ship. |
More water problems. The shower and sink don’t drain properly resulting in two inches of water on the bathroom floor after showering. We’ve reported it several times to no avail. The other passengers have made the same observation who’s cabins are near ours. Oh, Carnival, we had such high hopes for you!
Anticipating today, with a sense of dread in our tired state, we somehow muddled through and are now situated in our cabin, writing to you using our trusty Xcom Global MiFi which fired up instantly. We have a flawless signal while in the port of which there are many over the next week and will use the ship’s WiFi signal when out to sea.
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| Tom noticed dogs being used for security for items boarding the ship. |
After seamlessly being pushed through customs with VIP status as “back-to-back cruisers, we exited the ship to grab a cab to take us on our errands. The process took about two hours, but we were pleasantly surprised by the organized process. We give credit to Carnival on this aspect.
Our Haitian cab driver, George easily found the four addresses we had printed off our little Planon Printer: for the bank, the UPS store to pick up our new camera and supplies, CVS pharmacy for toiletries, and a Publix grocery store (in order to purchase a few month’s supply of our usual Crystal Lite Iced Tea).
Eighty cab dollars later, we were back at the ship, whisked through check-in via the Captain’s Lounge, enthusiastically welcomed back aboard the ship to once again, find our cabin, cleaned, and ready for us until we see if tonight they can move us to another less noisy cabin.
Once back inside, we unpacked our new “stuff” still grinning over unloading two heavy pieces of luggage at the UPS store being shipped to my sister in LA all of which totaled 100 pounds. Now the goal is to unload one more large bag to get us down to two bags, one carry on and one computer bag each. It’s daunting, but doable. The vitamin bag is still an issue.
In actuality, in the large box we received from our mailing service, we had three more large bottles of vitamins. After considerable research over hearing loss from which Tom suffers from 42 years on the railroad, we’ve recently noticed an improvement in his hearing after about a month after he began taking 600 mg of magnesium per day.
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| The staff at the Golden Olympian Restaurant danced down the steps and around the tables again last night bidding cruisers adieu on their last night on the seven-night cruise we boarded mid-cruise on Tuesday, the 9th. |
Now, we’ve added another supplement that is used as an adjunct to magnesium, NAC, N-Acetyl Cysteine, 600 mg to improve hearing loss. Only time will determine if the combination of these two supplements provides additional improvement. We’re hopeful. Of course, we’re not professionals, nor claim to be, but considerable research has steered us in this direction.
One week from today, we’ll move over at this pier to board the Norwegian Epic in order to go on the Atlantic Ocean crossing to Barcelona.
The customer service desk assured us they will do everything they can to move us to a quieter cabin before bed tonight. I sure hope so. A good night’s sleep is exactly what we need.