Cruising

Cruising was just plain old fun. I'm no fan of the ocean in general; give me a mountain, and I feel safe and happy, but a boat on the ocean? I'm a sitting duck, so to speak. Surprisingly, I found the huge ship not a bit scary (as long as I didn't lounge by the railing), and mostly just had a good time with Mike's big old family. We played around. There was a cool rock climbing wall next to the mini-golf, but that just felt like pushing my luck.

We watched some fairly amazing shows, the best of which was a rocking group of musicians who performed a bunch of oldies. There was also a sweet--I don't know what to call him--who performed crazy things like juggling and plate spinning, etc., and he was really entertaining. He naturally selected Tyler as a volunteer. Tyler really works the beard thing and it gets him a surprising amount of attention. He's very enjoyable to watch--and the judges agree, which is why he won the sexiest leg competition. If you know Tyler you can imagine this, and if you don't, no amount of explaining will really paint the picture. We also had the pleasure of watching Beth and Gregory sweat it out in the Newlywed game, and I think they were very brave as there were a couple of questions I would not have answered with all Mike's family looking on, not the least of which were his parents. Yikes. They performed admirably. Carrie posted some good shots of this here. We also suffered through a lot of karaoke--apparently, most of us are gluttons for punishment.

Mike's dad is rarely (if ever) seen without his camera on his face, and we had ample opportunity to pose. The upside is that now we have great pictures, and I never once thought Oh, I wish I had my camera!

The food was delightful, and primarily the sheer amount of it was great. I loved not cooking and still eating. Ah, the desserts.

There's me pointing something out to Mike which is not the very cute little tugboat that pulled us out of port.

Leaving port.

There I am with David, Debbie, Marianne, and what appears to be a snow capped island. That's Santorini. That place was unreal. I'll post about the ports soon, but the boat was an experience in itself. It's not my preferred way to travel, but it was truly fabulous to cover so much ground (or water) in one week. It was enough fun that I only managed to read one book while on board--that ought to say it all.