Well, this trip was definitely an adventure.. It started off when we got to the airport and my wife asked where the camera was.... that kinda set the tone for the rest of the trip.. doesn't matter that she put the battery in and put it back in the closet, not with the rest of the luggage
.. we are always laughing at people using their cell phones for pictures... luckily mine had a decent camera and a big memory card. We also picked up a disposable or 2. It is hard to use a film camera when you are so used to just snapping pictures and deleting the not so good ones.. These pictures should be interesting when we get them developed.
It was very apparent that Continental and United are merging and the flight attendants aren't happy about it.. Most miserable crew I've dealt with both directions on this trip.. Looks like the last good airline is going downhill.
Carnival Destiny was the ship... its an older ship that has been updated. The air conditioning in the dining rooms wasn't working well.. not so good in the middle of the Caribbean in August! The food wasn't very good either. The wait staff was slow and inattentive. It must have been a new crew as the attention to details wasn't very good. Our last cruise on Carnival, the wait staff learned our names, what we liked, and payed a lot more attention to details.. The shower backed up into the bathroom floor 2x. Luckily it was just soapy water, but still pretty nasty. The main lights in our room intermittently worked for the first 2 days.
Jamaica - I'll never step foot on that island again.. We were bombarded/harassed the moment we got off the tour bus by people selling stuff.. We did the snorkeling trip at Dolphin cove which was pretty nice, then to the Dunns River Falls. The falls was neat, but very hard to enjoy when you are always trying to watch your back from someone trying to harass you. Then trying to leave that place was another trip in itself. It took a while to discover the magic words.. " I don't have any more money". If I knew how important that phrase was in the beginning, it may have been a bit better. There was an old soda shop in the park I wanted to stop at, but by the time we passed it I didn't want to look at anything but the boat back to the ship. I also think that the falls are man made. The river may have been there, but those rocks and all are man made. I haven't seen too many rocks with trees and burlap bags growing out of them.
Grand Cayman- Very nice.. I would definitely go back there for a vacation. The people were friendly, it was clean and the water was beautiful. So was the rest of the scenery at the beach... too bad we only had a short time on the island.
Water was a bit rough wed night-- guess the after effects of Earl. We docked back in Miami on Thurs early am. Our flight home wasn't until 4:30, so we did a trip to the Miami Aquarium-- sad to say, but probably the highlight of the trip. Its a very small aquarium, but we got to see Flipper the dolphin and the big Killer wale... There was some good shows, was saw in the few hours we were there.
The flight home was uneventful, except for the miserable flight crew. Garbage all over the floor of the plane, etc.. Felt good to be back in my own bed. Then we see on the news about the excitement we missed at Miami airport last night. I am soo glad we got out before that happened.
