HONEYMOON ♡ Day 4

Our first port - Puerto Vallarta!

PV is known for their beaches, but we spent most of our time swimming with dolphins and spending time at the water park.

Docking:
As soon as we get off the ship:
Swimming with dolphins was so cool! We were in group with some other folk. After sitting us down to watch a DVD, off to the water we went! The dolphins are trained so that if we make a T-shape with our arms out to the side, they will come up behind us and pull us along. If you float in a superman pose with your arms in front of you, the dolphins use their nose(?) to push you up out of the water so that you're "surfing." One thing on my To-do-before-I-die list, Check.

Watched the sealion show and the dolphin show:

Ate a hamburger for lunch but with my soda was defeated by the swarming bees.. :(

Went on the waterslides:

Rode in a taxi, the driver really likes Taz and has a walkie-talkie type of thing where he talks with other taxi drivers...

Cy entered the ping pong tournament:

I contributed 2 pieces to the cruise-wide puzzle:

Ate dinner:

Were entertained by Piano Man (who is probably the best entertainment on this cruise - he's really good):

Had a late-night snack/dessert... Notice a difference?

Here's Cy's plate:
And here's mine:

And called it a day. Tomorrow is our second port - MaZatLaN!

HONEYMOON ♡ Day 3

Still on the ship, but still finding things to do!

Here's our breakfast:Cute, huh? :) Cy's had sausage and hashbrown next to it, and a yummy danish on the side.


This morning, we went to the counter to get a print out of our bill. We discovered that we had some money refunded due to oil prices dropping? Not sure why this happened but the man and woman had different responses to this...

Mrs. Woo: Wow, this is great!
Mr. Woo: Yeah, we have extra money now.
Mrs. Woo: Let's spend it on eating and shopping!
Mr. Woo: Nooo, it means we can save this.
Mrs. Woo: Oh, right, yeah... Can we spend a some of it?

Later we saw a cool demonstration of fruit carving!
Apparently, these men watched their fathers do this in the Philippines, and there's even a school for it. Check it out:

We think her eyeball is made of olives.

Try sending this to your boss next Christmas.

Pretty~

Ouch!

"Hey, Shrek!"

Arggg!

I can't post all of them because I want to post some other pictures, too. Like lunch!

We sat with this other couple in their late 30's or so. The guy was funny. We asked him to take a picture for us, but before doing so we wanted to make sure "nobody was home." His commentary: That's a good one. Click. ... Okay, we'll take a nice one too. Click.
Not too long after Afternoon Tea is dinner. In the meantime, we're probably figuring out the floor plan by walking around the ship, getting exercise (and bragging rights) by competing against each other in ping pong, or playing Scrabble on the balcony while keeping our eyes/ears out for dolphins. ("Oh, look!" means those who are on their balcony have spotted the dolphins. "Ohhh~" means the dolphins are jumping out of the water. "Amazing" means we're too late in catching a look at the cool creatures.)

Here we are on our balcony:

By the way, we had a drill where everyone grabs a life vest upon hearing the alarm go off and gather at the appointed place. (Thank you, Titanic for what not to do.) So for all those who warned me of pirates and sinking ships, Princess has got us covered.

Before dinner, we went to go take portraits again. We went to another "studio" location (they had about 5 or so) for B&W. Our pictures from yesterday turned out nice and one of them even got a sticker as the photographers recommendation! Yeah, America's Top Models are here y'all! J/K. At the rate we're eating, we'll never get a step onto the catwalk. Regardless, I look forward to seeing the photos displayed in the foyer. We haven't bought any yet so that we can compare and choose all of them at the end. They're quite pricey at 20 a pop.

Back to food:











































More than the shows, the best entertainment thus far - Piano Man:

Tomorrow is our first port at Puerto Vallarta! WOO-hoo!

HONEYMOON ♡ Day 2

Day Two - We're still on the ship, but loving the life.

After waking up and opening the door to grub, we found these balloons that said "JUST MARRIED" on them. Not only that, but we were also greeted with a complimentary wine voucher. How nice of Princess. Putting that together with the free 8x10 picture that our travel agent sent us, we were very happy (and thankful) newlywed campers. :)

Of course, we went right back to our initial plans of chowing down after acting like a little girl (only me, not Cy) about the balloons. Instead of showing you the pictures of all the plates of food that we ate, I'll show you some inedible sights. [Photos courtesy of yours truly]

Here's our balcony:
Here's the view from our balcony:


Here's the Scrabble that we borrowed and played from the ship's library (I know, they're crazy like that):










Okay, I lied. I want to show you some food. In the afternoon, they had a sushi buffet.
(Um, Princess, is that crazy man thing behind me necessary?)The sushi surprisingly looked better than it tasted, so we went to the 24-hr buffet and piled a few plates high and were satisfied with our alternative snack.

Then, we moseyed on over to the art auction:


Tonight was Formal Night so we got all prettied up in formal wear:

We had dinner...


























































...and then we rolled ourselves to our stateroom stuffed.


Restaurants: 5 vs. Gym: 0.5
(We went to the gym for a raffle drawing that was held in the gym.)

HONEYMOON ♡ Day 1

Hello!

We love honeymooning!

This morning we woke up at the crack of dawn, had dear brother-in-law Nolan (who woke before the crack) drive us to the airport, fly to Long Beach (or somewhere around there), had our friend Eric drop us off at the port, and boarded our very first cruise!

With the nifty everything-card (you use it as your key, credit card, etc.) they gave us, we boarded. They stuck in the card, told us to look down at the circle, took our picture onto the card as our ID, and off we went to find our stateroom.

Our names were posted on a Princess Cruises emblem tag outside the room. Later, we found out that the plastic tray-like thing it was attached to was our mailbox. Yay, mail! We took a browse through, oooh and ahhh'd over things, and even before unpacking, we went straight to business - the 24-hour buffet. There, we piled our plates high and put "bank for buck" to practice while flirting with "gluttony" (shame on us!).

There are two entrances to the buffet (That's good if you're eager to eat and don't want to go all the way around. It's bad if you're lacking exercise.) At the beginning of the station, they had the automatic Purell next to the stack of warm plates, utensils, and napkins. Then, you walk up and down the stations and grab whatever you want. :) Cy really liked the mashed potatoes. I really liked the bread. Needless to say, all our buffet plates had our favorite items on it.

Satisfied with the 4.5 stars rated food, we set out to the back of the ship (or was it the front?) for the departure. No Titanic reenactments were made due to the many precautions we were given from others. Apparently, many Jacks and Roses have fallen overboard or at least gotten hurt in one way or another from their dramatization.

Yes, we sported my wedding gift to Cy very proudly. I must say, I did feel like a newlywed on her honeymoon: (1) We had the "cheesy" t-shirts with our engagement picture on it which read "I heart MY HUSBAND" and (2) We were miles away from anyone we knew. After the departure, we rested a bit with ESPN, and then went to eat some more. There were a handful of restaurants on the ship, two of which were specialty restaurants (= pay extra). We went to one of the non-specialty restaurants to enjoy our meal which was included in our trip. Bread = yummy. Flower-shaped butter served on top of ice = pretty. Appetizers = 3/4 ordered. Entrees = 3/4 ordered. Dessert = 2/4 ordered. Dinner done well. To work it off, we toured some more on the ship and took some more pictures (we used up all of Nolie's 4GB to the very last second), and then went back to our room to turn on the idiot box and enjoy the sounds of the waves from our balcony.

Tomorrow is another day at sea on the Princess Sapphire!