TimesToCome

This past week we took our first five day cruise from Galveston, TX to Cozumel and Chichen Mexico on Carnival’s Ecstasy.

All in all I was happy with the trip and would gladly do it again. Since we live close to Galveston we can pick up last minute fares pretty cheap.

We spent a day at sea, a day at Cozumel, a day at Chichen and a day at sea.

The food in the main dining is very good but you have to put on real clothing to use the main dining room. The come-as-you are food was about what you’d find in any fast food chain and not so good.

The gym was well equipped, but running on a treadmill while the ship is rocking is a challenge even in calm waters. So I only managed one run.

There is a spa on the ship, shops, clubs and plenty to do. I was curled up with a book most of the time. The back decks are quiet and sheltered from the wind and a good place to have coffee and read.

We had a balcony with our cabin, but when you aren’t in port the wind on the balcony makes it unusable.

I wish I’d brought more clothing, especially warmer clothing and jeans. Galveston’s chilly this time of year and indoors everywhere the a/c was on high. It turns out you can wear blue jeans in the main dining hall now.

I’d've brought more Dramamine too, I went through two containers. Turns out that sea-sick pills are available at the information desk and that’s a very good thing or I’d not have survived our last night out at sea.

We wandered down to Galveston today. There never seems to be much of a crowd down there. Probably because any smart person would not choose to be wandering about city streets on an August day in Texas. However there were more than the average entertainers out and about.

We were shanghaied by Mike T ( Mad Hatter Majik ) who caught me taking his picture. He performed some cool magic tricks and added in some comedy for us. He was having a busy day despite the small crowd.

The musician below was performing Celtic style music and played ‘Danny Boy’ as we went by. The funny thing is I was just thinking how nice it’d be to hear ‘Danny Boy’ when she broke into it.

Yet another musician was playing a combination rap-reggae style music. He had plenty of spare instruments for the crowd to use and the crowd was happy to make use of them.

Little boys and big chess pieces, seems they are always together down in Galveston. These two were pretty intent on their game.