Embarkation Day

As Michelle and I are off for a weeks vacation cruising in the Atlantic Ocean I'm going to write a series of absentee blog posts relevant to what we are doing that day. There are two deck cams on the Pride, the Bridge and the Aft where you can watch to see if you see us. Watch the Forward Cam as that is where the ice cream machines are that I tend to find.

This is the one of the longest days of the cruise, the other being when we get off. We're scheduled to arrive at the Port of Baltimore at around 1:30 for our Embarkation. We do not have Faster to the Fun this year so we will have to wait with everyone else, but I'm hearing it's a smooth process or so we hope.

At about 4:00 we will do our mandatory Muster Drill where everyone goes to their muster station for instructions in case we have problems at sea and hit an iceberg. They walk through everything like the safety flotation device and how to use it, and about everything you will need to know if there are problems.

We'll hopefully meet a new set of dinner guests this evening, we have remained friends with each and every couple we have dined with on every cruise. Looking forward to making new friends.

Debarkation Day and Returning Home

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well here we are, by the time that this starts to post I will probably be available by phone as we will be entering the Chesapeake Bay and docking this morning at the Port of Baltimore early this morning.

Today is the end of our cruise and time for the next set of cruisers to enjoy their time on the Carnival Pride as we have.

We will be Debarking hopefully mid morning and going through customs with our luggage and everything else that we will be bringing back.  Hopefully we can get out of downtown Baltimore early this morning, but that really doesn't matter. Last year we were leaving right as everyone was trying to get to Baltimore's M&T Stadium which is right by the port.

Fortunately jumping on I-95 to return home is a very easy task for us and it should not take us too long to get out of here. I think last year we were eating lunch in Hagerstown around Noon, we'll probably be carrying our luggage off once again plus we have "Faster to the Fun" which pretty much gives us priority getting off the boat today and getting through customs.

Hopefully we should be getting home some time this afternoon.

I hope you have had as much fun following our vacation as we have had on it. We are both off of work tomorrow as well to get all of our chores done, hopefully I will put the rest of my pictures up on Facebook of this years vacation for all to enjoy.

By estimate, we have covered about 400 miles by car and about 2,600 by ship for a Grand total of around 3,000 miles during this vacation.

Wish us a safe trip home, enjoy your day and tomorrow's blog should be the first live blog that I will have written in a while.

A Return Day at Sea

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well our three ports of call are now complete and we are traveling up the Atlantic Coast on our return home, we will be hugging the Atlantic Shelf unlike our trip down when we went into the deepest parts of the ocean.

This is the day when all the shops on the boat have their best deals. They are wanting to unload everything so that they can restock it again when it arrives in Port tomorrow. It's usually Bella Perlina merchandise that Michelle ends up fighting a mob of women for, but she lives for this stuff and I want to stay as far away from it as possible, especially when all the women start fighting over sale items..lol

For me, my day will probably be in the Sports Bar watching as much College Football as possible and passing the time away. The Mountaineers will be at home today playing Maryland, I'm hoping one of the stations on the boat carries the game. I've missed the game the last three cruises because it has been unavailable to the networks we had available.

Tonight will be our final dinner on the ship and we will get our little send off that they always sing at the end of every cruise.

Have yourselves a great day, we're on our way home.

Freeport Bahamas

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today will be our third and final port of call before he start heading back north to Baltimore.

We are in Freeport the Bahamas and all we usually do here is a little bit of shopping. A couple of years ago we headed into Port Lucia, but they had the same shops there that we had here and they opened much later.

There are a number of small shops around Freeport, one of which is a place that makes hand made Christmas decorations that we have one made every year. Each and every one of them are different, and when we hang these on our tree as we do with many of our special place and moments and recall where we got that particular ornament as we hang it. That however is Christmas and I'm in the Bahamas right now.

One thing that everyone always seemed to ask me for was a tour of the Carnival Pride. Mind you this years Video Blog was done a year ago, a couple months prior to the Carnival Pride going into dry dock last November and getting all the new upgrades to Funship 2.0 that we are enjoying this year.

This is my second attempt to publish the video, the initial attempt was nearly 60 minutes long and somewhere there was some corruption in the file, so this is part of the tour.

As always, have yourselves a great day, a relaxing Friday and enjoy yourselves, because you know we are and we will be.

Half Moon Cay

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today we are in Port at my favorite place in the whole wide world, we will be at Carnival's Private Island Half Moon Cay.

Water around the Port is very shallow, so we will have to tender (boat) out way from the ship to the island and back. Michelle and I have dined with one of our dinner companions from last year again this week, Cheryl McCann (in white) and her Husband have been dining with us all year. We would have loved to have seen Donata (Purple) make it this year, hopefully she will make it next year.

One of the highlights of Half Moon Cay is that you basically spend the entire day on the island, Carnival even sets up lunch on the island since there are no real restaurants and you don't want to keep tendering back and forth to the ship.

Once again I have prepared a video blog of our day and journey last year, so you can have a little sneak peak into the day we will have today.

Enjoy your day, because you know we are going to be enjoying ours.

Grand Turk

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today we enter our first Port of Call in Grand Turk. A place that we will do a little bit of snorkeling and a little bit of site seeing. Last year we ventured to the other side of the walkway to see what was over there, and we found this NASA Exhibit over there. Amazing what you can find when you go to places other than that wonderful beach and Margaritaville.

There are always amazing things to see in the waters there. There is the Canon as pictured there as well as a huge anchor and a few other lost treasures that lie beneath those beautiful crystal clear and calm waters.

We will be taking our underwater camera with us as well today, maybe we can find a special shot or two or three to talk about next year.

Have yourselves a great day and know that we are. =)

Another Day at Sea

Michelle working Cryptogram

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well here we are on our second day at Sea today, this is the last day we have before we start to arrive at our Ports of Call, Tomorrow is Grand Turk, but that is tomorrows blog.

Usually on the second day at Sea they run a lot of the fun stuff in the evenings, as all of the entertainment is concentrated on board as we are not in any port of call. Last year (see Video) Jeff the Juggler was the featured entertainment for the night, but that was last year, I'm sure there will be someone different this year.

As I did in yesterday's blog, here is the video blog that we recorded last year on the second day at sea for our cruise.

Have a Great Day, we will.

Day at Sea #1

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

One thing I have always wanted to capture and have to date failed to each time I have attempted, was to capture a sunrise on the ocean. In 21 attempts we are 0 for 21 when it comes for clear weather to see this, well how about this picture that I took on last years cruise of the moon.

Anyways, this is our first full day at Sea, we'll be in waters as deep as 21,000' as we leave the Atlantic Shelf and enter into the deeper parts of the Ocean. By the time this blog posts we should be going around Cape Hatteras, which is probably the roughest water that we typically see. If you are going to get seas sick, this is where it typically occurs. Our first cruise we were in the AFT (Back) and right above the engines, so yours truly managed to get a little bit seas sick.

Tonight will be the first of two formal dinners, that is when we get all cleaned up and they serve us Lobster Tails and Prime Rib. We will once again be all dressed up and will have a series of professional pictures taken of us as we are dressed up. We printed those pictures out last year and handed them out to everyone. We're planning on doing the same thing again this year.

The following video is from our first day at sea and formal dinner last year, please enjoy it and make sure you have yourselves a great day today. We definitely will.

Embarkation Day

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well it is Embarkation Day for Michelle and I. We will be leaving the hotel later this morning and driving right past MT Stadium when the Baltimore Ravens Play and giving our one finger salute once again as we make our way to the Port of Baltimore to embark upon the Carnival Pride.

We will be moved to the Gold Level VIFP this year, we will pass our 25th day at sea on this trip and they always advance you to the next level if you achieve that level on the cruise you are on like us this year. It's the next level where all the real perks kick in for free, but this year we purchased Faster to the Fun as we did last year and bypassed all of those long and absolutely ridiculous lines that people have to wait in.

Once we are on the boat we will be enjoying lunch somewhere on the Carnival Pride, I personally want to hit up Guys Burger Joint, but there are a number of other options for us to choose from.

One thing we will be excited to see today is the new and revamped Carnival Pride. It went to dry dock last fall and was upgraded to a Funship 2.0 since our last cruise. We are already very familiar with this ship, even though everything has changed. There will be very little time spent figuring out where everything is located.

We will be dining with one of the ladies we dined with last year. She and her husband will also be taking this cruise and we are already booked as dinner companions again. The couple we dined with two years ago are also on this cruise, but are traveling in a large group of people and we will not be dining with them, but are looking forward to seeing them.

Enjoy yourselves today, we intend to.

We are Doing It Again.

Carnival Pride

We waited long enough, I was waiting to hear something about our contract, but something tells me that there is going to be another extension and waiting so we went ahead with our Cruise 2015 booking.

We are now once again booked for our 2015 cruise which will be in 189 days (let the countdown begin) and we will be taking the same cruise once again for the fourth year in a row. We absolutely love this cruise and the ports of call, and the Carnival Pride was just updated to a Funship 2.0 this past fall, so we are once again setting sail to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Freeport the Bahamas this September.

Dani and Roy Marsh

We are also taking a couple of first time cruisers with us as Michelle's Sister Dani and husband Roy will be joining us for this years cruise. We both booked and paid for our cruise last night and we are all set to go. We helped them through their booking  last night as we booked ours and we will be in side by side rooms, meaning we can have the partition on the deck between the two rooms opened up and we can have one big deck to all share. Because we booked this weekend and Carnival has a special going on, we already have $50.00 worth of on board credits to use.

Michelle and I are all set to go, agreed to everything and filled out all the information including our passport information and our online account. All we have to do is print out our boarding passes and luggage tags and get ready to go.

We will be assisting Dani and Roy as they prepare for their first cruise. Our dinner companions from two years ago Jim and Pam have also booked once again on this cruise and we are looking forward to meeting up with them once again.

This year the Carnival Pride has installed not one, but two deck cams for everyone to watch.

Cruise 2015 is set and ready to go and we could not be any more excited. Anyone else want to join us?

Vacation Day 6, Half Moon Cay

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.

Vacation Day 5, Grand Turk

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.

Vacation Day 4, another Day at Sea

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.

Video Flashback Thurday

Once a week I lie to take time and look through all of my pictures that I have either taken, scanned, stolen off the internet or in his weeks case saw on youtube since it has significance to us. Little lost moments in time that I like to put up and share with everyone. Sometimes it's pretty easy like this week and sometimes it's not so easy, it is however always a whole lot of fun.

I saw this video on Youtube and it was actually the cruise that we were on. The people and sights that you see is what we witnessed on our 2013 Cruise and the ship will look the same as we bet ready to board it again in about 5 1/2 weeks. They Music they chose is significant to the cruise as they played it at dinner one night and formed a big conga line.

Still pictures just can't do justice as to what we saw, and I will be providing videos when we are once again out at see this year as I show our movies from last years cruise day by day.

Enjoy the Carnival Pride.

Hi ho hi ho

We're Doing it Again

As announced in my tidbits post yesterday, we have booked our 2014 cruise.

We went through numerous options over the past few months including leaving out of New Orleans, but since Carnival has said they are going to revamp the pride later this year and have it back up and running as again as a newly redesigned ship in 2015, we'll take the same cruise once again.

We are comfortable leaving out of Baltimore, there is no added expense of a flight, and we actually enjoy this cruise.

I asked Michelle what it is that she likes to do when we go on vacation, the answers were similar and agreeable. We just love to snorkel and there are not one but two prime places to do this on this cruise in Grand Turk and Half Moon Cay.

Let the countdown start, we're doing it again.

Back in Baltimore

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Well as this posts we are probably getting ready to head back under the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge once again as we head back to the Port of Baltimore and get ready for disembarkation.

Last year it took us a while to get off the boat, but we learned if you are driving and park at the terminal, you will be the first to be let off the boat and go back through customs one final time before returning to our car Pearl.

It has hopefully been a great vacation and you may see a live blog from me this morning after this one posts to discuss how our trip really did go. I can tether my phone, something I could not do at this time last year with AT&T, so I'll have internet available to me once we hit the bay.

We will be returning to Morgantown today and spending the day getting unpacked.

I'm already looking forward to next years cruise, but we're talking about flying to Miami and departing from there to find some new and different ports to visit.

We're back.

A Day at Sea: The Return

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Today is our final day at sea of our vacation. We have made visits to three wonderful ports and I hope we have had the opportunity to get some great pictures that I will be able to upload and share with everyone when we get home. 

The deals will be a plenty aboard the ship today, everything is state and duty free which means we will probably be doing some shopping on the boat and probably spend a little bit of time in the Casino sometime today. 

As I recall last year I struggled to find some WVU footballs scores, and being we are playing Georgia State today, I probably am not going to know very much about the game until we get back inside the bay tonight or early tomorrow morning. 

Tonight will probably be a formal dinner and a special send off like they did last year. At Dinner the staff and crew always perform a dance number that is usually very memorable. Tonight's will be the goodbye dance as this will be our final dinner on the boat. 

We should be going through the ever turbulent Cape Hatteras once again, hopefully I'll already have my seas legs and won't be affected at all. 

  

Freeport Bahamas

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Well today we will visit our third and final port when we dock in Freeport  Bahamas. Last year we didn't venture very far from the boat as there are a bunch of local shops around the dock. So when we visited last year it was raining and you have to travel to the local town to really do anything.

Last year we enjoyed the little shops, but this year as of the time of me writing this blog, I'm exploring options on things to do for this port. I'm still exploring excursions for this port, knowing we were planning on snorkeling at the previous two ports, we'll have to see what we can fins here to spice it up a little.

Tomorrow is a day at seas as we start to head back to our home Port in Baltimore.

Half Moon Cay

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Today will be the highlight of our cruise, we'll once again be at Carnival's private island Half Moon Cay. This is where the snorkeling was the best for us last year and we fully intend on snorkeling once again in this tropical island paradise.

Carnival goes all out here, they actually provide a cookout lunch on the island. They own the island, so they have a number of things they can do here that they really can't do anywhere else.

It is absolutely beautiful here and this has to be my favorite place I have ever been, if not on the whole earth. I wish everyone could be with me, but I'll do the next best thing and provide a video for all to enjoy. This was someone elses video from another cruise ship, but you'll get an understanding of what thisn wonderful place is like.



Tomorrow we head to our third and final Port, Freeport Bahamas.

Grand Turk

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Well we are visiting our first of three ports today, we are in Grand Turk and guess where we will be eating lunch at today? You guessed it, Margaritaville where you can find the worlds best calamari. This will be our lunch today, the rest of the day will be filled with snorkeling in the Ocean.

The water there is crystal clear and there is little to no vegetation in the water due to the high salinity content and the higher temperatures. This makes snorkeling optimal in my opinion and this will be what we will be most of the day.

Last year we did one video log, and it was after we visited Grand Turk. I'll try to do one for every day during the vacation, but I tried to do that last year as well.




Half Moon Cay, Carnival's private Island and our favorite port to snorkel is where we will be tomorrow.