Seattle, here we come!

After all the angst of packing, my suitcase weighed in at 49.6 lbs.  Luckily, American Airline's scale matches that of my bathroom, so I was prepared for it to be close. Admittedly, my carry-on backpack is pretty heavy, too, so once again I've over-packed.  Seriously, how does one pack for Alaska in May?  The weather might be all over the place.

Kelley and Zach flew from Indy to Denver to Seattle and arrived about 1:50 pm.  My mom and I flew from Cleveland to Dallas to Seattle arriving about 30 minutes later.  Our flights were uneventful, and we met at baggage claim.

Welcome Grammy and Toots

I had pre-arranged a shuttle to get us to our hotel, the Marriott Seattle Waterfront.  The hotel was nice and the location was pretty good for our needs.

The view of Puget Sound from our hotel room.

When I think about Seattle, I think of Starbucks, the Space Needle and the skyline picture that is used in every episode of Grey's Anatomy. I had never considered that Seattle would be hilly, and boy, is it ever.  Some of the inclines are extreme.  It really isn't what I would consider a "walking" town, so even though our hotel was convenient, it would have taken someone much more fit than myself to walk from our hotel to some of the shopping areas.  Luckily, one of my Chevrolet dealers has a son who lives in Seattle, so he had recommended using "Uber" for our transportation needs.  Uber is an app on your phone that allows you to arrange immediate transportation in select cities.  The app uses your GPS location to send a driver to you, and you can choose the size of the vehicle you need.  The driver usually arrives in 5-8 minutes, and conveniently, you can set up your account with PayPal so that no money is exchanged (tip is included).  You hop in, ride, hop out.  Easy peasy...and it's less expensive than a cab.  We used Uber several times throughout the evening.

When we got into our hotel room, Kelley introduced me to a couple of stowaways - Flat Nathan and Flat Jon - who would be joining us on our escapades.  Here they are hitching a ride to dinner.

Flat Nathan and Flat Jon

After settling into the hotel, we headed to Iver's Seafood for dinner.  It's was probably a little early for dinner by Seattle's standards, but with the 3-hour time difference, we were all ready to eat.  We tried some oysters as an appetizer, then we had salmon, crab legs, and halibut for dinner.  It was delicious.

The Puget Sound ferry

We then headed to the Space Needle and the Chihuly Glass Gardens.  The weather in Seattle was perfect for long distance viewing.  We were told that Seattle has an average of 54 days without rain each year, so we were very fortunate.  The views were amazing.

Spiders painted on the roof of the building

Century Link Field - Home of the World Champion Seattle Seahawks

Safeco Field - Home of the Seattle Mariners

We then headed next door to the Chihuly Glass Garden.  Dale Chihuly is an American glass artist from Washington.  He spent some of his early career in Venice, Italy, and is celebrated world-wide for his permanent art installations.  The first one I saw in person was in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, but according to his website, he also has an installation at the Huntington Museum of Art.  (I plan on checking that out soon!)  As you can see from these pictures, his work is amazing.  The colors are so vibrant.  Interestingly, Dale Chihuly suffered an eye injury years ago, so he isn't able to personally create a lot of the individual glass pieces any more, but he has glass artisans working with him that bring his vision to life.

Glass Flowers

Flat Nathan enjoying the art

Flat Nathan loves cobalt glass

This shot was inspired by my art director, Zach Lego

Glass Cactus

By now, we are all exhausted.  We ordered an Uber to get back to the hotel and crashed.  We watched part 1 of the finale of Dancing with the Stars, but Kelley was begging to go to bed.  We just aren't cut out for this time change.  Here's to a good night's sleep.


7,887 steps
3.55 miles

Did you say Alaska?

Well, I can hardly believe it's been three years since my last cruise - especially since I've been ready to go back since I stepped off the Dream.  I'd almost given up hope of ever going again.  And never in my wildest dreams had I ever even considered an Alaskan cruise  After all, I'm a warm weather girl.  Kelley has always wanted to visit Alaska, and for a time, she even talked about going to college there.  In February, I traveled to Indianapolis to visit Kelley and Zach in their new home.  At some point throughout the weekend, they mentioned they were considering a cruise to Alaska around Memorial Day, and when they asked if I would be interested in joining them, the answer was YES!  Within a few days, I'd convinced Mom to be my roommate, and we had cabins booked. Initially, Mom and I were going to be in a balcony room with Zach and Kelley across the hall in an interior room, but as luck would have it, Carnival called them a couple of weeks before the cruise and offered to upgrade them to a balcony room (for a nominal fee, of course).  In addition, Kelley was able to get both rooms upgraded to side-by-side extended balconies.  Woohoo!  Party in Alaska!  So this will be an account of our adventures...or misadventures, as the case may be..and it all starts tomorrow.  

Homage to the Towel Animal

Since I didn't feature the towel animals this cruise, they get a post all their own.

Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey...

With the debarkation process on any cruise ship, passengers are given the option of tagging their luggage with their debarking number and sitting it outside their cabin the evening before leaving the ship. The next morning, you leave the ship when your debarking number is called, and your luggage will be waiting for you in the terminal. Since we were on a different deck than the rest of our group, Bib suggested we take our luggage down to their floor and tag it with their numbers so we could all debark at the same time. Carnival had provided us with all of our debarking instructions, and we knew that we would not be able to get off the ship until 8:15am. We set our alarm for 7:30am last night; however, our morning started with a wake up call from Sarah at 6am. (UGH!) We met everyone for breakfast on the Lido deck then headed down to the Encore to wait our turn to leave. By 8:30am we were through customs, and by 9:15am, I took this final photo as we pulled away from our Dream.


We got back to the Residence Inn Cocoa Beach, and we were exhausted. We said goodbye to Annette, Becky, and Pat (who had left their car at our hotel), and headed inside.

Inside the lobby, there were groups of people with their Dream luggage tags waiting for their shuttle to take them to over to board. I was instantly so angry and jealous. Luckily, our room was ready for us, so we didn't have to hang around to watch them leave.

Since our flight isn't until 6:30am tomorrow, we have all day to just relax at the hotel. We watched movies, went to the pool, ordered pizza, and went to bed early. It was the perfect time to just decompress. It already seems like such a long time ago. Maybe it was all a Dream...

It's so hard to say goodbye

I really hate the last full day of a cruise. On one hand, you want to make the most of every minute and do everything you didn't get a chance to do. On the other hand, you know in the back of your mind that you need to get your stuff organized and packed, so there is a dark cloud hanging over the day.

Today started with our final breakfast in the Scarlet dining room. Our new friend, Leslie, joined us. We then spent some time in the photo gallery ordering pictures from the week. We also worked on making a photo book of "The Adventures of Flat Deana." Several weeks ago, Bib had come up with the idea of taking the photos. We had planned to find a Wal-Mart or CVS after we debarked to put the book together as a birthday present for Deana. We had no idea that the Dream would offer the service onboard!
She's laughing...she's crying...I think she liked it.

The afternoon went by in a blur. We had lunch in the Scarlet today, too. Since this was a Sea Day, we knew the Lido would be packed, so we took one final opportunity to have our meals served to us. It was wonderful...so wonderful, in fact, that we skipped the chocolate buffet on the Lido deck.

This cruise recap would not be complete without mentioning Bruce and Bea. They were onboard celebration 62 years of marriage. They were so adorable, and if anyone made the most of this cruise, it was them. They participated in a number of activities...and they loved to dance. It was not unusal to run into them on Ocean Plaza dancing to the Blackjack band. Bruce had some moves!

Here, they are participating in "The Game of Love." The three couples in the picture have been married 62 years, 25 years, and 1 week, repectively. Much like the format of "The Newlywed Game", Butch (our cruise director) would ask the couples questions, and they had to match answers. One of the questions was a fill-in-the-blank. "You haven't seen ugly until you've seen my wife's _____." Bea answered that Bruce better have said nothing. Bruce's answer? "You haven't seen ugly until you've seen my wife's sister, Janice." That's the most perfect answer ever.

When we got to dinner tonight, there was a lovely arrangement of paper flowers as our centerpiece. Our sweetheart, Jason, had made a flower for each of us. Aren't they pretty! Not only were they pretty, but they smelled good, too.


He had sprayed the flowers with his cologne. When we asked him about it, he told us it was called Dark Chocolate.

{Let me fast forward a couple of days. When we got home Sunday afternoon, my mom and I were talking about Jason to my brother and his family. Mom told them about these flowers and that he had sprayed them with "Dark Chocolate." My 14-year old nephew, Jon, piped up and said "Hey...I wear that...it's Axe." HA! He ran upstairs to get the can, and mom and I proceeded to sniff it the rest of the afternoon, while my brother sat and rolled his eyes. In the meantime, Kelley was telling us about the commercial for this product that had a chocolate man that gets torn apart. Check it out. My favorite part is when the girl on the bus takes a bite out of his biscuit.



Everyone has memories that are brought about by scents. We had so many laughs with Jason that the smell of this Axe body spray will forever be ingrained in my mind as the signature scent for this cruise. }

Back to dinner....tonight we celebrated Pat and Sarah's birthday. They showed up for dinner in style. Dinner took a sad turn at the end as we realized it was time to start saying goodbye to Tsvetan, Iputu, and Carolina. Tender-hearted Pam started crying.

Tonight was the Legends show in the Encore theather. This show is made up of fellow cruisers who have been participating in the karaoke shows throughout the week. They perform as their favorite superstar. Here's Butch as Dolly...

Here are two of the entertainment staff as Sonny and Cher.

And for one last time (this trip), we hung out at Ocean Plaza.

Jason hijacked the camera and took this picture of Tami, Linda, Agnes, Louise, Bib, Louise.

Jason and Mom.

It was so hard to say goodbye to our African Violet, Jason. We all wanted to take him home with us. If he ever leaves his job with Carnival, we've all agreed to find him a job in WV. We've tried our best to teach him "hillbilly" this week. Here are a few of the phrases he's tried to master.

"Kiss my crack, and don't come back"

"Don't let the door hit ya' where the good Lord split ya."

"Pert near, but not plumb"

"Up a crick" and "down the holler"

In return, he taught us a few dances. We'll never forget you, Jason! You spoiled us all week.

Costa Maya, Mexico

We're back in Mexico for our final port. Costa Maya was also built specifically as a stop for the cruise ships. This was a new port for me, so I wasn't sure what to expect. It was actually a beautiful place. The dock was pretty long, so there was a trolley ride available to transport passengers to the end of the pier. Costa Maya had the feeling of a "lifestyle mall" (think Easton in Columbus, OH) with the exception that it had saltwater pool with a swim-up bar in the middle of the plaza. There was also a pool area along the coastline with dolphins.

There was an artisian here who personalized rings with a small tool that looked like a hacksaw. Here he is creating a ring for Bib. It took him about 3 minutes to carve her name in the top. (Unfortunately, I didn't get an "after" picture.)

This was a short day at the port, and since all the ports were starting to look alike by now, we headed back to the ship by noon. It was a hot and humid day, so we spent the afternoon lounging at the pool.

For lunch, we tried the pasta bar. Oh my goodness! It's probably a good thing that I didn't find this until so late in the week. It was delicious. The made-to-order pasta bar is an area all to itself on the 11th deck. You start at a hostess station, and she gives you an order form. You can chose the type of pasta, the type of sauce (marinara, bolognese, butter, alfredo), and any add-ins (chicken, broccoli, eggplant, the list goes on), salad, and a roll. It takes a while to get your food, but it is well worth it. Yum!

Tonight was our final Elegant night. The dining staff pulled out all the stops. For the entertainment tonight, we danced to the song "Low" by Flo Rida. Last night, Jason had taught us some of the moves, so Bib and I hopped up and danced along. Jason, of course, came in to dance with us. Unfortunately (NOT!) I don't have pictures of the dancing.

Tsvetan and Iputu (or Sweatin' and PooPoo)

The gangCarolina with Pam and Frankie

Tonight's show in the Encore had a country theme and was called "8 More Seconds." The main two singers in these shows are pretty talented, but the dancing is a little bit cheeseball for my taste. After the show, we went to Ocean Drive to hear Blackjack play. We ran into the Atlanta girls, and they're always good for a lot of laughs.

Tomorrow is our final day at sea. I'm just not ready to say goodbye to this trip.