Second day of cruise

Note:

If this "publishes" on May first, just know I actually wrote this on April 24th, our technically second day of the cruise… so it was Monday.

Jerry is taking a shower, so I thought I’d write about our cruise we’re on, try to keep the memory of it alive.  J.This is technically our second day at sea, it’s really our first FULL day.  We got up at 3:15 yesterday morning… of course my bladder woke me up at 3.  I did go back to bed for the 15 minutes, but I was really fully awake, so I got out of bed just as the alarm was going off.  We left at 4 a.m., got to the airport shortly before 5, and the crowds for our United flight were pretty nuts, but we managed to get on our plane at 5:35 or so, and left around 6:10, getting into L.A at 7:10, but not to the gate until almost 7:20.  We should have eaten as soon as we got off the plane, but we went to get our bag instead, and then had trouble finding a place to eat, and finally had to settle for this little Java place in concourse 6 that sells coffee and VERY overpriced sandwiches, we’re talking almost 7 bucks for a ham and cheese sub here, with lettuce, not even anything as good as Subway.  But it was food, and it was actually a pretty good sandwich… lettuce was a tad wilted, but that was mostly all right.  At least the airport seats are comfy.  We ended up NOT taking the ship’s shuttle, as they wanted 23 dollars per person to take us there, and settled on a shuttle-Prime Time, I think.  They were 16 dollars a person, so much more reasonable.  The Carnival shuttle guy was like “the question you have to ask is how you’re going to get back?”  Well, when we got to the port, it was OBVIOUS how we were going to get back, there were a TON of shuttles there to take people back to the airport… thank you Carnival guy, for using lies to try to scare us into paying more for your shuttle.  We’ve learned over the years though.  So we got to the terminal about 10 a.m. and it was WAY early, so we went and got early registration, where we learned we were VIPs, whoohoo!  Jerry had booked us into a stateroom with an obstructed view, so we wouldn’t be in the bowels of the ship on the little bunk beds they have.  So that’s what got us VIP treatment… plus the fact that we have taken Carnival cruises before.  So we got these gold “sail and sign cards” which I should explain for you guys who’ve never cruised before… a sail and sign card has numerous purposes, it serves as your room key, and your “credit card” while on board, plus ID, since you’ve already shown all sorts of ID to get the darn thing in the first place.  Mostly it’s so you don’t have to carry cash on board, you just charge everything to your sail and sign card, and then they charge the credit card you authorized to get the card in the first place.  So after we registered, we went around to their shops for awhile, saw some things we’d like to buy, but Jerry decided that we’d buy a t-shirt we saw on our way back… really cool, an Eagle, on top of an American flag.  Eagles are like Jerry’s symbol… wolves are mine… dogs and wolves.  I have always had a “relationship” with dogs, though Paula I find very hard to have a bond with, she’s such a rambunctious dog.  NOT her fault, of course, but I just don’t like big oafs of dogs… Brittany was a big oaf, to an extent.  I did my best to train some of it out of her, and Jesse was a big old attention hound, and so is Paula.  I hate it when a dog lifts your hand onto their head so you’ll pet them.  Oh well.
So we got in our line at 12 noon, and the lines were already really long.  This guy came around asking if anyone had VIP on their booklet they give you…we couldn’t find it, so Jerry went and asked the guy, he looked at it and said, follow me, so we ended up one of the first people in line, VERY cool…