This is the first opportunity I've had to put my cruise experience into a posting - hopefully I can get it all in!
First of all, I want to thank Claire for putting the cruise together - it was the perfect ship with the perfect itinerary, especially for first-time cruisers, and you put a lot of thought into making our experience memorable. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting Claire in person, imagine a tiny firecracker covered with sequins. Fabulous!
The group was amazing. Although we were heartbroken that Paul and Bernardo had to cancel, and although we would have loved to have many more members of our TT family with us, we still had the most marvelous, delightful dozen that we could ask for - I adored everyone and enjoyed getting to know you better. Claire did an accurate assessment of each of us that I could not improve on (although I note that she gave more lines of text to her description of Jeff than she did to me - NOT acceptable! Regardless of that, she still loves me best, Jeff - deal with it!
), so I'll focus mainly on the trip and the activities.
Cam and I had the pleasure of hanging out with Jeff (BigBearJeff) and Dave in Miami on the Saturday night and Sunday morning before we sailed, and they are fantastic. Both smokin' hot, witty, warm, down-to-earth, and a wonderful couple who've been together for 11 years! They are like brothers to Cam and me! Although Dave does act as the calm foil to Jeff's hilarity (seriously, the man needs his own reality show on Bravo), Dave's actually really funny in his own right and a perfect match for Jeff. We went shoe shopping before dinner (Dave was the voice of sanity, calling me back from the siren song of the
world's most hideous belt, whose mesmerizing shiny mineral ugliness hypnotized me into almost buying and wearing it forever - thank you for saving me, Dave!) and then ate at Casa Juan, a nice Cuban restaurant close to our hotel. We went hot-tubbing after dinner and enjoyed talking about our weight loss journeys and all of the changes WLS has worked in our lives. We met for breakfast at the hotel the next morning and took the shuttle to the pier together, where we got to meet Michelle, Erin, Claire, Corrine, Maline and Roy, and Andrea and Nicola while waiting to embark. It was so much fun to hug everyone!
The ship is a hoot. As you can tell from the photos, the hull is painted with big, swoopy swirls of jewel colors, and the interior is even more eye-popping. We boarded on Deck 7 (the Promenade Deck) and entered the Crystal Atrium. I thought its hot pink, electric teal, and lavender color scheme, Swarovski Crystal accents and sparkling white and blue icicle lights everywhere made it look like something out of a Disney movie (think
Sleeping Beauty meets
Beauty and the Beast on an acid trip), whereas Jeff and Dave thought it resembled Barbie's Dream House gone wild. Either way, it was amazing to us that our eyes actually adjusted to the ship's decor over the time of the cruise and everything started to look normal to us, so that by the time the cruise ended, regular interior design now looked flat and colorless!
Our balcony stateroom (hot pink, orange, and turquoise color scheme) was a marvel of small-space design ingenuity, especially the really cool bathroom and closet with shelves. Our balcony was by far my favorite part of the stateroom and spoiled me for ever cruising with a porthole or inside cabin in the future. Our stateroom was next to Michelle (Duckie) and Erin's (Nyn's) on one side and two down from Claire and Corrine's on the other side, so we got to enjoy chatting with them a lot while hanging out on our balconies.
Michelle and Erin, you are absolutely gorgeous - your pictures don't even come close to the reality of your beauty, and you are both incredible people. Cam and I loved spending time with you! We travelled to Grand Cayman together on the tender boat from the ship (we travelled back with Jeff and Dave), plus sat together at the Captain's formal dinner on Monday night, dined together at the Tsar's Palace on Tuesday night, Azura's on Wednesday night, and Cagney's Steakhouse on Thursday night. One of our rituals involved each of us ordering a different dessert (yes, I said dessert!
), taking a bite, passing the desserts clockwise, and then taking another bite, until everyone had tried everything. It was a blast!
Cam also spent a lot of time with Michelle and Erin in the Fizz Lounge doing karaoke (both are truly talented singers with incredible voices) and I enjoyed cheering Michelle on in the Jewel Idol competition on Thursday night, plus hanging out with Michelle and Erin in the Liars' Club Show later that night. As I told Erin, if we had had an
Army of Drunken Skanks cheering you on like the Marine dude did, you would have won, hands-down. We did our best - Claire and I danced (along with that twirling five year old girl), Cam and I did the wave, we all shrieked, hooted, and whooped, and my constantly sanitized hands were abraded from all the clapping, but the Marine got the win anyway. The judges even admitted that you had the best voice by far! What you did with the "random" assignment they gave you ("Yellow Submarine", for crying out loud?!?) compared to the Marine's admittedly hilarious but much easier Spice Girls number was pure genius. You were robbed, plain and simple, but at least you looked breathtaking in your purple dress and blew us away with your voice! We love you, too, sweetie!
This is already long and I've got to run, so I'll post more later...
I love all of the pictures, and I'm starting to look through Duckie's now....love the one of her kissing the stingray. 
Incidentally though, I just booked a cruise for next October on the same ship you guys went on. I got an awesome deal...$599 pp for a 14 night cruise. I can't wait!
TT Cruise 2008 memories
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