divine angst

Day 0

Our little vacation started with a late flight out of Our City to Orlando. The flights were fine—no delays, except a minor one in Dallas when our connecting flight’s crew was late getting in from Indianapolis. Oh, and they kept moving our gate. When we got off the plane, we headed to C2 to discover we’d been moved to C7. So we went back towards C7 and had a beer. Then we noticed nothing was going on at the gate, looked at the monitors, and found we’d been moved again, to C3. At least they were all at the same end of the terminal.

One late (1:15 am) arrival into Orlando and one shuttle ride to the hotel later, we were sleeping—on a foam bed. I think it was, in fact, memory foam. Mr. Angst suggested that we get a glass of wine and jump on the bed for a little while, just like in the commercial! But it was 2 am by then, so we decided to sleep instead.

Day 1

Next morning, my brother-in-law arrived from the airport to our hotel. We had “continental breakfast” courtesy of the Fairfield Inn, and waited for our shuttle to the pier (45 miles away). Our driver was…gregarious. He asked us if we’d made sure to pack our booze in our bags…and, of course, we hadn’t. No booze in our bags? What to do? Our driver knew what to do. He drove us to a liquor store. We tipped him well.

Once we got to the pier, we gave our bags to the boat people, went through security, and were allowed to board. Where we promptly bought two piña coladas. We made our way up to the top of the ship to eat at the buffet-style restaurant—and buy two MORE piña coladas. We couldn’t get into our rooms yet, and our bags wouldn’t be delivered until close to 5 pm, so we had no choice but to keep buying drinks. But boy, those piña coladas were good.

Once we did get into our room, we had some fun exploring the smallness. The shower, for instance, was raised up several inches from the floor. Fine for me. Not so fine for Mr. Angst or his brother:

(Faces blacked out to protect the innocent.)

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the pool deck enjoying the sun and the wind and the beer and the family. And the dancing—line dancing. I don’t line dance, but these people do:

I got sunburned on my chest and shoulders from sitting out in the sun without sunscreen (our bags hadn’t been delivered yet), so it’s a good thing I was wearing a tank top. Farmer tan on me is bad.

At 4:30, we were off to muster, which is the safety drill. Everyone has to put on their lifejacket and go to their muster station so they know which lifeboat is theirs if the ship hits an iceberg in the Caribbean. Fun!

Note three lifejackets—we shared our stateroom with Mr. Angst’s brother. We upgraded to a small suite because there were going ot be three of us, and I am SO glad. We had a balcony and no one had to sleep in a bunk.

We had cocktails later in the bar at the very top of the boat. Lovely view, yes?

We headed down to dinner as a group. Now, if you’ve ever been on a cruise, you’ll know that dinners are interesting. They seat you at a table with other people on the boat. Luckily, being part of a big group on board for a wedding, we got to sit with Mr. Angst’s cousin, her husband, and two random groomsmen. (One of them is a funeral director! He’s 28 and a funeral director! Isn’t that interesting? No? He wasn’t either. Or maybe he was just drunk—most of the groomsmen were drunk most of the weekend.)

See the pretty central area of the ship?

Day 2

Our destination was Nassau. We’d have a few hours on the shore to explore before we had to get changed for the wedding. So Mr. Angst and I slept in. Hey, it was vacation! We managed to get breakfast anyway, because I ordered room service. Room service on the boat, by the way, is free. Which rocks. And then we got off the boat to explore.

Nassau is a pretty town. Everything is very Caribbean. The buildings are all pastel and white and bouganvilla blooms all over the place.

These buildings are all government buildings—the Supreme Court, Parliament, and some other government offices:

Of course, there was a nearby reminder of the seedier side of the Bahamas:

We tried to shop, but didn’t see anything we wanted to buy, except Cuban cigars. Mr. Angst and his brother both bought a stogie to smoke after the wedding. Then we went to Señor Frog’s. Sad, I know, but it was hot, we’d been wandering through the Straw Market (street vendors all clustered together in one place), and we all needed a drink. Drunk people were singing for free drinks and there were a lot of folks who looked older than my parents in the bar. Not what I expected, but I guess we were a little late for the Spring Break crowd.

We went back to the boat. Our boat, by the way, was not that big. Here she is, docked right next to a ginormous ship:

Back on board, we got cleaned up for the wedding and went back to the pier to catch buses to the wedding site—a historic estate in Nassau that’s been turned into an inn and restaurant. More bouganvilla:

We took some group and family pictures, got back on the buses, and went back to the boat to get changed for the reception. Saturday night’s dinner was “formal night” and Mr. Angst and his brother and his dad all wore tuxes. I wore my pretty dress. The father of the bride informed us that, because he was paying a flat fee for the open bar at the reception, we needed to drink heavily. And we did, until the waiters stopped serving and it was time for dinner.

After dinner, we danced on the pool deck with all the wedding folks until the pool bar closed. Then we went down to the nightclub and danced all night—or at least, until 3 am. The bride’s bustle broke, but I think that’s par for the course at a wedding. (Someone stepped on mine at our wedding and I spent the rest of the night holding it up.) We tried to fix it with someone’s tie tack, but it just wouldn’t hold.

As we left the club, I saw an open elevator and, because my feet were terribly sore from the cute strappy shoes, I ran in to take it up to our deck. Bad call. Vomit on the floor in the elevator. All over the floor in the elevator. I had walked all through it. I was very sad and I had to wash my feet off when we got back to our stateroom.

This is what our stateroom attendent had done when she turned down our beds for the night:

Admittedly, we were tipsy, but we laughed our butts off at this. Those are Mr. Angst’s sunglasses.

Day 3

Day 3 was supposed to be our beach day, but we woke to an announcement from the captain that, due to the unsettled waters and wind, we would not be able to stop at CocoCay Island. The waves were too high to allow the tender boats to get out to the ship and ferry folks to shore. So we spent the rest of the day floating around the Caribbean. We figured we’d just spend the day on the pool deck, but it was packed and very windy and almost cold, so after an hour or so, we retired to shower and relax in our room. We watched The Incredibles, ate lunch, and went to the afternoon show. The singers weren’t bad, but they really needed a true baritone—the high tenor they had singing all the low parts was painful to hear.

Right before the show, we noticed the boat was listing to starboard and wondered why. Turns out we were turning around, heading to Freeport to drop off an ill passenger who needed more treatment than was available on ship. But did we actually get to dock in Freeport? Nooooo. They sent a tug out for the passenger and we turned back around and headed for Florida.

I admit it, the rest of Sunday we were lazy. We hung out in our room, took naps, watched The Incredibles again (I love that movie), and read. It was actually pretty nice. I went out on the balcony for a bit. We packed up our bags, except for the clothes we needed to wear for dinner, and cleaned up the room a bit.

We made our way down for dinner, then ended the evening in the Latin bar with the wedding party and family. The rocky seas were getting to me, though, and we went to bed. I took a dramamine and slept like a rock.

Day 4

We were up by 7 so we could shower and eat before we had to debark. We’d had to put our bags out the night before and they told us we should be out of our rooms by 8 am. Lucky we got up when we did because we had just enough time to finish breakfast when they called our group to leave. We went through customs, baggage claim, and were out the door by about 8:45. They herded us onto a bus headed for the airport, and we arrived at the terminal by 10:00 or so. We had five hours to kill.

Thankfully, the Orlando airport has a nice mall in it—outside of security. So we sat down with our stuff, read a bit, wandered into Brookstone and Lush, and finally checked our bags at about 11:30. Then we ate lunch at Macaroni Grilll, browsed through Border’s, and went through the metal detectors. And then we waited. We read more, we endured the whistling of the guy cleaning the bathrooms and emptying the trash cans, and finally got on board.

Where I sat next to a large woman headed to Mexico City, doused in Pachouli. I really don’t like Patchouli.

We made our connection without problems or delays and were in the car, heading home, by 7:30. It was pretty nice. I called in an order of orange beef for pickup, and we caught up on email and blogs and the news. Vacation over. Glad to be home.