Tag Archives: Carnival Legend

April 4, 2012

Vacation Day Five: Cozumel, Mexico

By Canadian Bald Guy

Sunshine and I knew coming into Cozumel exactly what we were going to do: shop. We had excursions planned for the next two ports and we weren’t really overly excited to leave the terminal area (I realize this part of Mexico isn’t considered dangerous, but it was still in the back of our minds so we didn’t want to take any chances).

Once again we were up at the ass-crack of dawn so we could go to the gym for 6am. And once again, we were able to work out and have breakfast before the sun came up.  On this morning, the sun was rising behind the ship as it made its way into Mexico…so that meant we were able to go to the back of the ship in the Serenity area to enjoy the beauty of it all.

Another amazing sunrise over the ocean

The sun rising over the trail left by the Carnival Legend.

Ready for the day!

We got showered, changed, and ready to hit the port of Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel is an island just off the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that has a population of about 71,400. It’s a location primarily known for some amazing snorkeling and scuba diving, but it’s also known as a great place for souvenir shopping. Because of this, we decided before the cruise that this was going to be where we did the majority of our shopping. With excursions planned the next two ports and available funds being scarce, we thought this might be the best idea. Thankfully, we were right.

We stopped at the port of Puerto Maya, which is an affiliate of Carnival (one or two Carnival cruise ships dock here six days out of every week) so we knew we were safe and the port would be well maintained. One of the fun things about this port (similar to the day before in Grand Cayman) was that there were a ton of great photo opportunities to be had.

Case in point: the “human statues”. As we were walking through the initial shopping area, we saw a gold statue right in the middle of the room. The statue really had some incredible detail and people were looking closely at it as they passed by. Just as one person went to place a finger on the statue, it suddenly sprang to life and said, “Don’t touch me!”

We were shocked. This guy had held still for a LONG time before finally moving. This was a job held by a few different people within the port area and they apparently worked for tips. Of course we had to take advantage of the photo op…

Sunshine with the "Gold Human Statue" in Cozumel. With his head pointed down, the hat covered his eyes so it was extremely difficult to tell that it wasn't a real statue.

Once inside the actual port, the cheesy photo ops were plentiful. And by now you should realize that Sunshine and I are all about taking full advantage of cheesy photo ops!!

It was really more about his breath than his teeth...

Ummm...giddy up?

For a change of pace, it's CBG in front of a fountain!

Rawr, baby!!

Of course, we also had to pick up some souvenirs for ourselves and the kids. With $1 maracas and trinkets, we found some great deals right off the bat. We then had to search store-to-store to find some t-shirt deals, but we ended up buying quite a bit of stuff (at least for us).

CRUISE TIP: Out of any port we have visited in the past two years, Cozumel had the most aggressive vendors. They’re not rude, but they’re constantly talking and trying to get you into their stores. Be wary, but don’t be afraid. Just smile and decline and they’ll talk a bit more before moving on to the next person. It can be a bit disconcerting if you’ve never experienced it before.

We thought about maybe getting a taxi to a more “downtown” area of Cozumel, but once we reached outside entrance to the port we figured we would simply continue to enjoy the shopping found right there. Plus there were more photo ops to be had…

Obligatory "Sunshine in front of a fountain" pic.

Can you even try to wipe the smiles off of our faces? We're a newly engaged couple enjoying the sun in Cozumel, Mexico. How awesome is that??

Another couple offered to take our picture if we took theirs. Of course we took advantage of such a nice offer. Gotta love fellow cruisers!

At this point we got to see a real, authentic mariachi band. Some people may take this for granted, but I found this to be a pretty cool thing to experience. These guys were the real deal.

So back inside we went, as there were definitely more stores to enjoy and more shopping to do. And with that, as you’d expect, were more photo ops…

Sunshine with another "human statue". Kudos to these guys for standing outside in the heat for so long just to get a few American dollars in tips.

Even with the threat of death, I was still impressed at this guy's teeth. Daaaaaamn!!

So Sunshine climbed up this replica Mayan ruin in order for me to get a couple of photo ops. As she stood there posing, the wind whipped up pretty good. By the time I took about four pics, her pants were soaking wet as the wind blew water all over her. As she got down a man watching told her that it was like I had planned the whole thing. Heh...

Puerto Maya really was a beautiful terminal to visit. Highly recommended.

I'm not a drinker, but I'm pretty sure this is a GREAT deal!!

That was pretty much our day in a nutshell. We took a LOT more pictures from our time here and I could easily post another dozen, but I’ll spare the bandwidth for now. After we got back on board, we decided to have a relaxing night. We didn’t do a whole lot after supper except check out the “Love and Marriage” show, which was like a Newlywed Game with three different couples (longest married, newest married, another couple in between).

Cozumel was definitely a great spot for us to visit.

Tomorrow’s post…cave-tubing in the jungles of Belize!!!

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April 3, 2012

Vacation Day Four: Grand Cayman & Some Vessels on Tressels

By Canadian Bald Guy

Cruise ships sitting off the shores of George Town, Grand Cayman

As of yesterday’s post, Sunshine and I had just about had our fill of shopping in George Town and wanted to take a taxi tour of the island. Thankfully, there were a TON of taxis around and for $20 per person, they were more than willing to take people around the island to specific spots.

The Cayman Islands are made up of three islands, of which Grand Cayman is the biggest (the others are Cayman Brac and Little Cayman). Because they offer tax neutrality to foreign nations, the Cayman Islands have become a financial center.  Today, the Cayman Islands’ financial services industry encompasses banking, mutual funds, vessel registration, trusts, structured finance, and even the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange (impressive for a nation where the total population of all three islands is only 55,000).

While an absolutely beautiful island, Grand Cayman doesn’t have a million things to see in terms of tourism, so they make the most of what they do have. Example? How about the Old Homestead.  This pink-and-white Caymanian cottage was built in 1912 and, being the oldest standing house on the island, is considered a big tourism attraction by the locals.

While interesting, I guess I don’t see the big deal…especially living in a nation where we have buildings going back a bit further than 1912. Still, knowing this cottage has stood the test of time with little updates or repairs over the years is pretty impressive considering some of the adverse weather it has had to endure.

We made our way down past Seven Mile Beach, which is widely considered one of the top ten beaches in the world. While we originally thought that we’d spend some time on the beach, we ended up only seeing it in passing from our taxi.

The view of Seven Mile Beach from our taxi.

I felt a bit bad since Sunshine wanted to spend some quality time on the beach, but she didn’t seem to mind too much as the tour went on. We ended up parked off the main road for a photo op that was just off the beaten path of the regular tourists. Really…the views were incredible.

Sunshine and I enjoying the beauty of the Cayman Islands.

The next stop of our tour was Hell. No…seriously.

Hell is a very VERY small spot in Grand Cayman that consists of (literally) a post office and a souvenir store. The fun thing about Hell is that you can send a postcard FROM Hell (postage available) and you can also have your passport stamped to prove you were actually in Hell (we didn’t think we’d be visiting Hell, or else we’d have brought our postcards with us).

Here's something you probably don't think about seeing every day: Sunshine in Hell.

The name is derived from the black limestone that covers the land behind the store. Apparently, local officials thought that this is what hell must look like and BAM~!! Welcome to Hell.

The black limestone that is found in Hell, Grand Cayman.

You wouldn't think two people would be so happy while in Hell...

Dolphin Discovery

Next on our tour of the island was a welcome surprise as it wasn’t initially listed on the itinerary: Dolphin Discovery. This is an ecological-tourism site that was designed specifically to house dolphins in a safe habitat and also promote tourism, as this was one of the places that you could swim with the dolphins.

The great thing about this spot was that while you had to pay a fee to swim with the dolphins, you could still sit and watch the goings on for free.

These were some of the lucky folks who got to swim with the dolphins at the Dolphin Discovery in Grand Cayman.

These are amazing creatures. Swimming with dolphins is now on my bucket list.

Okay…here’s an interesting tidbit to know about the Cayman Islands (well…it’s interesting to Sunshine and I, anyway). Something to keep an eye out for is the chicken. No…I’m not kidding.

Y’know how squirrels and chipmunks roam around residential areas in North America? Well…feral chickens run around here like that. They seem to be everywhere. Basically, a feral chicken is a wild chicken and are so common in the area that the locals were laughing as Sunshine and I were taking pictures to show our friends back home. I mean, it’s just so odd to see chickens running around free in non-farming areas.

Oh look...it's the cock of the walk.

I can't begin to tell you just how proud Sunshine was for being able to actually capture a chicken crossing the road in a photograph, much less using the frickin' sidewalk to do it!

It’s also not really that odd to be able to not only take a picture of a large iguana, but to be so close to one that you could pick it up if you wanted to (I didn’t want to, for the record…lol).

This guy was literally inches away from me. I wanted to take him home as a pet.

Cayman Turtle Farm

Across the street from the Dolphin Discovery was the Cayman Turtle Farm. Here you could swim with turtles in a lagoon full of marine life in a very beautiful conservation area. Inside there was also a restaurant area that served conch fritters and marinated conch appetizers. Because the Cayman Turtle Farm is dedicated to both conservation and carefully calibrated commercial sales of traditional food products, the restaurant also offers a modest selection of turtle dishes for those interested in exploring the island’s culinary background. We couldn’t make it over so, unfortunately, turtle soup will have to wait for another day (seriously…I would have TOTALLY tried it!!).

We started making our way back to the port so we could get back to the ship before the last tender left at 3pm. Along the way we saw the money of Grand Cayman in a really big way, thanks to the Britannia Villas area of the island:

Britannia Villas in Grand Cayman. Each home's backyard was connected to water that is actually fed in from the ocean, allowing home-owners the ability to come home from work, jump in their yacht, and head out into the ocean to chillax for awhile whenever they felt like it. Wow.

Britannia Villas Golf Course. The golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, was made so that the water hazards are actually fed from the ocean. Just spectacular in design.

After saying goodbye to the good folks from the Norwegian Sun (all from the Jersey area, I believe), we made our way back to our port, jumped in a tender, and began to make our way over the gorgeous water back to to the ship. I was just in awe at the beauty that appeared to be everywhere we looked.

The blue waters of the Cayman Islands. I never want to reach the point where this view EVER gets taken for granted.

It's not often you see "authentic replicas" of pirate ships in a Caribbean setting, but it just seems to be at home here.

Back on board safe and sound, we got ready for supper and head down to the restaurant. When we were seated, the maitre ‘d congratulated us on our engagement…something I found pretty classy (someone must have entered it into the “master computer” so that the restaurant would know once we checked in). We were seated and were given a complimentary bottle of champagne as a “congratulations from the ship”. Yeah…we were pretty impressed with that.

The best champagne? Complimentary champagne!!

The meal was good (there will be a separate post on food later on) and I was so full that I couldn’t even order dessert. At this point, some waiters came over and began to sing to us completely out of the blue. I grabbed my camera about halfway through the song…

So I ended up getting a dessert and we ended up emptying the bottle of bubbly. I’ll tell you…we were one happy couple at this point.

Our waiter was slightly happy, too.

We noticed that the evening had a few fun things on the agenda (highlighted in red at left), including a couple of trivia contests. We knew that this was going to be our opportunity to win more ships on sticks so we took off to the Atlantic Lounge for some Movie Sound Clip Trivia. I gotta tell you…this wasn’t easy. However, between Sunshine and I we were totally able to recognize clips from Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, and (thanks to her ) I Am Sam. It was the last one that won us ship #4!!

Ship #4!!

At this point I didn’t want to call them “ships on sticks” anymore. I had heard the term “vessels on tressels”, so that kind of stuck with me. We raced down the corridors to our next stop, which was a “Name That Tune” in Satchmo’s. Needless to say, I pride myself on my musical knowledge. Knowing something like “I feel good” by James Brown is actually called “I Got You (I Feel Good)” might be useless to some people, but it won us vessel #5!!!

Ship #5!!

The night ended with some karaoke (yes, of course I performed…lol), a pretty entertaining juggler/comedy act, and yet another towel animal. We had asked our room steward to please NOT remove the animals each night as we wanted to “collect” them as the week went on. Thankfully, he obliged our request:

The beginnings of our towel animal collection.

Tomorrow on the agenda sees us stop in Cozumel, Mexico!!

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April 2, 2012

Vacation Day Four: Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

By Canadian Bald Guy

To say that we were riding high after the previous night’s events would be an understatement.

As such, we had requested a 5:45am wake-up call so we could hit the gym for 6am. As you could imagine, we still had a lot of anxious energy to burn off and didn’t want to waste a second of the vacation we were experiencing.

Once there, we figured the amazing treadmills on board the Carnival Legend were the perfect way to take care of that.

This pic was taken during the day. We were there so early that the curtains were still down and the sun had yet to rise.

Once we were done, I was really pumped up. And, of course, because of the little race I’m running in July I felt as though I just had to take a picture to show off a bit on Facebook upon my return back home. Y’know…just to let him know that my vacation didn’t mean I was taking it easy.

Oh that's right, kids. Vacation DOESN'T equal slacking off!!

After our workout we went on with our daily routine of having breakfast before the sun came up. Thankfully, we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunrise over our first port of call, Grand Cayman. Once we took a couple of pictures, we went to our room in order to get ready for the day. The weather was expected to be gorgeous and we wanted to be able to take full advantage of it.

The beautiful sunrise over George Town in Grand Cayman.

The tentative plan was to walk around and shop a bit, then walk a couple of miles to Seven Mile Beach…all the while enjoying the weather and getting exercise at the same time. Well, things didn’t quite work out that way.

Where Grand Cayman doesn’t have deep enough water to handle cruise ships close to shore, we had to wait for tenders to come out and pick passengers up and ferry them back and forth to land. Where Sunshine and I weren’t in any hurry, we took our time heading on down to the tender (probably arriving at about 9:15ish) and found not only was there no line-up, but we got right on and left only minutes after sitting down.

QUICK CRUISING TIP: If you’re booked on an excursion at a port where the ship has to use a tender, either through Carnival or through a private operator, you really want to try to get down to get on one early enough so that you don’t miss out on anything. Where we had nothing scheduled at this port, everything ended up timed perfectly.

It’s really amazing to see these cruise ships up close and from the outside. As we made our way around the Legend, we noticed two other ships were on either side of us…the Norwegian Sun and the Disney Magic. As the day wore on, three more cruise ships would make their way into the harbour area. Once we arrived at the docks, I took a few pics as we were looking back.

03-20-12: The Carnival Legend from the main port of Grand Cayman.

One of the things I love about cruising is that most everybody on board is as friendly as you are. As such, whenever people saw us taking a picture of ourselves they would come and offer to take one for us. Because of this we ended up with some nice pics over the course of our trip that we probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise…

Umm..really? I chose THOSE shorts with that t-shirt??

As a couple of people who really don’t get the opportunity to go out and explore the world as much as we’d love to, we thought we’d spend some time checking out the local wares that were located around the grounds of the port itself. We realized that we probably wouldn’t find the best deals in the world, but we just wanted to experience as much as we could.

Honestly...we could probably pass for brothers, right?

Hey...what's he lookin' at??

What's up with the fellow baldies in the Caribbean?

No...I'm not sure what she's doing either. Go THAT way?

We spent awhile walking around the shops at the port before branching off into the streets of George Town, the capital city of Grand Cayman. Honestly, I’m not sure what we were expecting to find…we just figured that with multiple cruise ships unloading thousands of passengers on a daily basis that there just HAD to be some good shopping to be found SOMEWHERE.

Well…we stumbled upon an interesting souvenir shop that not only had more photo ops available, but had one of the most unusually-named products either one of us had ever seen.

Sunshine + Margaritaville parrot = great photo op!!

Ummm...yeah. This is Big Black Dick. But wait...there's more...

So yeah…directly above is me with Big Black Dick.  It’s not a joke, it’s actually a LINE of products found in the Cayman Islands through Blackbeard’s.

According to the website, “Richard Le Noir is a local legend, better known as Big Black Dick. His name lives on today through our range of Big Black Dick rums, liqueurs, sauces, seasonings and other mouth-watering delights that are exclusive to BlackBeard’s and the Cayman Islands.”

We found some of his other products inside the souvenir shop. One, in particular, resulted in the ONLY regret I had out of the entire trip. I mean…I can’t believe I didn’t buy some of this stuff, and I kick myself to this very day for not getting it. 

Oh…what is it? Well…

It's so good you'll do WHAT??

So yes…let’s read the slogan at the bottom of that bottle for a second. This is BIG BLACK DICK hot sauce.  Just how good is it? So good, apparently, that “YOU’LL SUCK THE MEAT OFF THE BONE”.

How many times in my life will I ever again be able to have regret at NOT having some big black dick?

Of course, there were some other fun things to be found within the store…

We didn't see ANY mosquitoes during our trip to Grand Cayman. If it's their official bird, they need to make their way up to Canada to see what mosquitoes are REALLY like.

This t-shirt makes me think of a fellow blogger. They know who they are.

I just couldn't help it...it needed to be done!

Some fun fridge magnets that we didn't buy. I like the upper left, Sunshine was partial to the upper and lower right.

At this point we were getting a bit restless. We knew that the beach was a $5 cab ride away, but we wanted to do more than that. We could see hoards of people getting off of the ships and jumping into cabs, and we thought that’s what we wanted to do, too.

So after looking around, we blended in with some good folks from another cruise ship and for $20 each, decided to take a tour of the island before heading back to the ship.

We’re so glad that we did, but that’ll be covered in tomorrow’s post…

Downtown George Town in Grand Cayman

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March 30, 2012

Vacation Day Three: THE PROPOSAL!!

By Canadian Bald Guy

Honestly, I knew before the end of December that I was going to propose to Sunshine at some point in 2012. I didn’t want to let on that I was going to, so hopefully she didn’t get too much of a hint. Sure, it was discussed…but I usually tried to change the topic of conversation whenever it was brought up.

Even when we had her ring finger sized back in January, I did my best to make it a “non-issue” and didn’t discuss it again. Of course, for those who don’t follow me on Twitter you may not have seen the following message…

I didn’t have a day or time picked out when I took this photo, but the moment we confirmed that we were going to go on a cruise I knew exactly when I was going to do it: the first formal-wear evening of the week (March 19th). Of course, having made that decision meant there were a LOT of variables I hadn’t yet finalized:

  • How, exactly, should I propose?
  • Where do I get a ring?
  • How do I hide the ring from her?
  • How do I pull this off??

The first thing I did was go to my dad, who buys and sells jewelry through eBay for fun. He opened his safe and pulled out a few trinkets for me to look at. He initially suggested one of my mother’s rings, but it had a HUGE diamond in it.  Wait…that’s not supposed to be a bad thing, is it?  Well, Sunshine isn’t one for flashy or gaudy. She wants unique and meaningful. So dad took out another ring which actually was an engagement ring/wedding band set where the band fit-in with the engagement ring. I knew immediately that I had to buy that one for her.

I knew that Sunshine preferred white gold, so I went to dad’s favorite jewelry store to “re-dip” the ring and have it re-sized. With about a week to go before the vacation was to begin, the ring was ready for her finger.

I had a couple of scenarios running through my head about how I was going to propose. I had three different options, actually.

  1. Take Sunshine up on Lido deck at night and find a quiet corner of the ship, then propose to her under the stars. Now I realize that this was the uber-romantic option to take, but it wasn’t quite “us”. I mean, I’m all about romance…but this just wasn’t how I wanted to do things.
  2. Walk past the numerous photographers on formal night en route to dinner. During our meal, I would excuse myself to use the washroom and run to the photographer that I would hope she liked. I was going to tell him/her my plan to propose and then hope they remembered me when I showed up after the meal. Then voila~!! Instant pictures and memories from the proposal itself.
  3. Contact the cruise director somehow in order to set-up an on-stage proposal during one of the main shows they have during the week. It wouldn’t be romantic at all, but it’d be on video and it’d certainly be memorable.

Honestly? I wanted to try option #3 first. I sent emails to Carnival, I sent emails to John Heald (three, in fact), and I even went on CruiseCritic.com trying to see if this was even a good idea or not. I didn’t get any answer to finding out (a) who the cruise director was going to be on the Legend and (b) how to contact them before we set sail. Without a ton of time to do some real digging, I quickly realized that this wasn’t going to work out.  And looking back now, my choice in the end was probably the best.

Then came the whole idea of just how to hide the ring from her. I wanted to just hide it in my suitcase, but people went nuts when I made that suggestion (because I told EVERYBODY at work about my plans…lol) and said I absolutely needed to hide it in my carry-on luggage. The only problem is that I NEVER take a carry-on with me.

Yikes.

So I found a bag that I could use and tried to hide the box in a dress sock. That didn’t work. I tried to hide it in one of my dress shoes. That didn’t work, either. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to hide the damn box in different socks before finally using a thick pair of wool ones that I stuffed in the bottom of my carry-on. I casually mentioned to Sunshine that I didn’t want to take any chances with luggage so I was going to bring a carry-on with me for the trip. Luckily, she was none the wiser.

The morning of the flight out of Halifax we were going through customs. Now it was probably about 5:15am and we were jittery enough from a lack of sleep and excitement, but my nerves were terrible because I knew if my plan was going to fail it would probably be at customs.

Sunshine went ahead of me and waited on the other side of the big ol’ scanning machine for her bag. I then went and stood next to her. Her bag came out. Mine didn’t. To my absolute horror, they had STOPPED the conveyor belt to look at my bag. A finger pointed to a small box with a circle in it. Then they ZOOMED IN ON IT.

I was going absolutely insane on the inside. I nervously looked at Sunshine next to me and she wasn’t paying attention to the situation at all. I looked back at the screen and they were changing colours and views in order to try to figure out just what they were looking at.

Kids…if I had to pull out the ring and propose in the middle of customs at the frickin’ Halifax Airport, I would have been PISSED. Just as I was about to pass out I heard, “We’re good” and the conveyor belt began moving again.

My heart began beating again and we made our way onto the plane a short while later.

So fast-forward to the ship. I had quickly realized that it would be mighty suspicious to just get up and leave Sunshine for any reason in a lame attempt to go to Guest Services and leave a message for the cruise director. So in my mind, option #2 was what I was going to go with. Even better was that the “Captain’s Celebration” (i.e. a meet-n-greet) was taking place in the main lobby before supper, so I would get a better idea of what background she preferred before we went to eat and I could hatch my “bathroom break plan of awesomeness”.

I did my absolute best to NOT act anxious or nervous in the final hour we were getting ready. She noticed I was hovering, though…and that made me even MORE nervous. Once dressed, I realized that I needed her to go to the washroom for more than 10 seconds so I could snatch the ring out of my carry-on. That made me even MORE stressed because she was almost ready.

Thankfully, Sunshine snuck away to powder something and I grabbed the box and stuffed it in my pants pocket. After confirming that you couldn’t really see the box sticking out of the side of my pants, I began to have a surreal feeling…I was actually about to do this!!!

Just as we were about ready to go, we took pictures that we always took before leaving the room…

You have NO IDEA just how nervous I was taking this picture knowing that the ring was in my pocket and I was about to propose.

I then put the camera in my pocket…only it was in the pocket I had the ring in.

CLUNK

I looked at Sunshine and she looked right back at me. The jig was up!

She asked, “What?”  I responded with, “Nothin’.” 

Crisis averted.

I then snuck off to the washroom to complain about my complexion (or something or other) as I was actually changing the ring from one pocket to another.  We then head out the door and I took yet another deep breath, totally ready to make the best decision of my life.

After introducing ourselves to Kirk Benning, the Legend’s cruise director, we each grabbed a drink and casually made our way around the room…talking to people and checking out the photo backgrounds.

At this point I immediately realized that it was too far to run from the restaurant to the lobby area…I’d be gone 10-20 minutes trying to pull off this plan. In addition, the line-ups were starting to grow at some of the better backgrounds…so it’d take even longer just to TALK to one of the photographers.

We then noticed that the line-up for the stairs wasn’t too bad. Sunshine really liked it and I did, too, so we decided to get in line and get a picture done BEFORE dinner. 

My mind switched on and said THIS IS IT!! I gulped down my beer to kill off my nerves and we inched closer to the photographer. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, our turn was next.

I pushed nudged Sunshine towards the stairs and immediately grabbed the photographer by the arm. I whispered in his ear, “I’m about to propose to my girlfriend right now. I need to make sure you get photos of her reaction.”

Without skipping a beat, he said that it wouldn’t be a problem and casually directed me towards the stairs…like he had known all along.

We posed for about two or three seconds before I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. Now I may be off here with my memory, but I’m pretty sure I said the following…

Wait a second. Before we go on any further…

(I turned to Sunshine)

You know how much I love you, right?

(Sunshine nodded with a perplexed look on her face)

Well..

(I pulled the box out of my pocket)

…I just wanted to let you know that you are the wind beneath my wings.

You are the sunshine of my life.

You are all I need.

You are every single cheesy 80′s song come to life.

And there is nothing I would rather do than to grow old with you.

So having said that...

(I opened the box and got down on one knee)

…will you do me the honor of being my wife?

She was beaming. My heart was pounding. We both couldn’t stop smiling.

And then she said “YES!”

It was truly the happiest moment of my life.

As we hugged and kissed and celebrated, the large crowd of a couple hundred people began to applaud. Most didn’t know what was going on, but word spread around the lobby pretty quick with so many people there.

It was exactly as I had hoped it would be.

We began to make our way through the crowd to head to dinner. The handshakes and congratulations were coming in from every direction. If I hadn’t been smiling so damn much I would have been crying with joyous tears.

Jaime, the assistant cruise director, was filming an interview segment with guests for the in-house Carnival show. She stopped us and asked if we could be interviewed by her. Of course we agreed.

Watching it back on the television about a thousand times as the week went on, the pure happiness and bliss and joy in both of our faces was impossible to ignore. It just cemented what I already knew…this was the RIGHT decision to make.

That meal didn't stand a chance on this night.

Off we went to dinner…beaming. People were congratulating us all the way from the middle of the ship to the aft, where the restaurant was housed. Our cheeks were starting to hurt because we were smiling so much. And while every other night of the cruise we ate with other people, on this night we dined alone. 

After mowing through an amazing seafood dinner we decided to pose for some more pictures, and as it turns out a couple of them turned out to be pretty awesome engagement photos that we’ll be able to cherish forever.

So there you have it. From beginning to end, that is how I proposed to Sunshine. Hopefully her memories of this evening are even half of what mine are…because even then they are amazing memories.

Soul meet mate.

The vacation recap continues on Monday. Have a great weekend everybody!

22 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in love, marriage

March 29, 2012

Vacation Day Three: Carnival Legend’s First Day At Sea

By Canadian Bald Guy

Wow…where do I begin to describe this day? I mean, it really started off with this post…but the actual proposal didn’t come until that evening (and the post describing the details won’t happen until tomorrow…heh).

So I suppose things started off by us getting a 5:45am wake-up call so we could hit the gym.

Yes…seriously.

This actually happened multiple mornings during our vacation. Honestly. I even have photographic evidence…

I was slightly excited to get to the gym so early.

I’m on a new healthy lifestyle kick and Sunshine is right there along with me for the ride. While watching TV on my treadmill, the curtains at the front of the ship raised automatically at around 6:15am. Unfortunately it was still dark outside so I just kept on watching TV on my treadmill.

I know it’s a bit lame, but I think that’s just a really cool thing to experience.

After a quick breakfast we head up to the Sun Deck to watch the sunrise. I gotta be honest, things weren’t looking that great initially because of the clouds in the background. Sunshine told me to wait for it because it was going to be awesome once the sun reached a certain point in the sky. And man was she right…

This has to be one of the most spectacular sunrises I've ever seen.

We head back to our room to shower and get ready for the day. At this point we realized that The Morning Show was on. Each ship has in-house television channels that promote everything Carnival, from excursions to shows to embarkation information. Three times during this week-long cruise, the cruise director (Kirk Benning, who was AWESOME all week long) would have a guest and do a live call-in show from a room on the ship. This particular show would be co-hosted by the assistant cruise director Jaime, who would be leaving in a few days to graduate to cruise director of her very own Carnival ship (she hosted the game show I had been on the night before).

What we did is highlighted in red.

ANYWAY…I ended up calling in and instantly became a hit (of course I did). Next thing we know we were told that something would be sent to our room that night. SWEET!! We both were hoping for another ship-on-a-stick, though I was secretly hoping for a bottle of champagne so we could celebrate my impending proposal later in the evening.

Once the show ended we took off for Kirk’s “Fun Ashore & Fun Abroad Presentation” in the Follies theatre. This was basically an overview of the best excursions to enjoy at each port,which was pretty interesting to watch even if we did have private excursions booked for later in the week.

After a quick lunch we decided to check out the “Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt”. Basically, it was a number of teams who had only 20 minutes to complete a number of tasks, all of which had to be recorded with either a photo or a video. We were game even though there were only two of us vs teams of four or more.  Here’s the list of things we were required to do…

Trust me...this was a LOT harder than it looks on paper.

So…how did we do?

Picture with Wilt Chamberlain — I knew we were right next to the sports bar, so it only made sense that a picture of Chamberlain would be in there. Thankfully, I was right.

Two members singing a Justin Bieber song — Now while my son may enjoy the croonings of the pop icon, Sunshine’s disdain for the Bieb’s music made this one difficult. I gave her a REALLY quick rundown of two lines of the chorus of the only song I could remember and proceeded to capture it on video. You could tell she was just over-joyed to do this one…

Two members slow dancing to music in lobby — This was one that wasn’t a problem to do, just a problem to record. We asked a stranger to video us. Keep in mind we were on a time crunch here…

 

Carnival Twister Waterslide — At this point I told Sunshine that we wouldn’t have time to do everything on the list and we should either skip this one or fake it. Sunshine said “HELL NO…I’M DOING IT!!”  Well…without a bathing suit on (that’s right…just wearing her clothes) she made her way to the top of the waterslide at the back of the ship. At this point it was so sunny outside that while I thought I was taking a video, I really wasn’t. So unfortunately we didn’t get the awesome video of her making her way down in her clothes, but I did get a pic of her at the very top getting ready to slide away…

What...you can't see her way up there??

There she is...just about to slide down fully clothed. That's my girl!!

Take a picture of a team member sinking a hole-in-one — Because this was “picture” and not “video”, we could TOTALLY fake this one (lol). We made our way to the opposite end of the ship and assaulted two young males playing mini golf. Sunshine, totally in “beast mode” at this point, faked celebrating a hole-in-one. Gotta love it.

Looks realistic enough, doesn't it?

Picture on the basketball court — Thankfully, the b-ball court was right next to the mini-golf course.

Who loves you, baby??

Lido Deck picture — Because it was a gorgeous day at sea, every single chair on Lido Deck was taken by a fellow cruiser. So we quickly sat on a chair when a lady stood up, tried to explain to her why we were stealing her seat, snapped a quick pic, and off we went back down to the start/finish line.

Sorry we stole your chair...not!

The last picture we took was at the start/finish line…

With Sunshine still soaked from the waterslide and me winded from all the running, we tried to make the pic a good one. #mixedresults

Here’s the kicker…

Not only did another team end up getting all nine tasks completed in under 20 minutes (we didn’t get people skipping on Deck 3 because hardly anybody was around), but we were THREE MINUTES LATE…the contest was over and they had already moved on to another game with new guests.

BAH!!!

Still…Sunshine was a beast doing this and I was actually quite proud of the effort she put in. I think we both had a blast doing it and in the end that’s all that matters anyway.

We then made our way to Lido Deck to check out the “Hairy Chest Competition”. Once I told Sunshine that I wasn’t going to participate (she thinks I could have easily won), she said that if asked she’d definitely be a judge.  Well…not two minutes later the Entertainment Director, Dan, came over and asked if she was interested in judging. You couldn’t have held her back if you tried.

Of course, she didn’t realize that judging the contest meant actually touching strange (OLD) men’s chests…

Yeah...you're smiling now. Heh...

The smile is now 100% fake and she's officially creeped out. TRUST me.

Once the final judging took place and the winners were crowned, Sunshine was given a ship-on-a-stick of her very own as a congrats for doing a great job as a judge.

Guess who won her very own Ship-On-A-Stick???

At this point in the day, we got some clues for a week-long “Murder Mystery” (something we totally lost tabs on after the first night) and then head back to our room so we had plenty of time to get ready for the evening.

Of course, at this point I’m beginning to get REALLY nervous because I knew I was going to propose.

But THAT story, my friends, will have to come tomorrow!!

11 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in tourism, travel, vacation

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