Not that I’m complaining. Day 2 started out late, east coast time at least. Anne had already been up for a while, but I couldn’t get up any earlier than 9. If we had thought things through a bit more, we might have realized that we had a least a half-day to explore Miami. Without a car and without a place to store our crapload of bags, it was going to be difficult. Instead we hung out at the hotel until 1 pm. I downloaded as much email as I could and watched some curling – a bizarre, but interesting sport. Is all that yelling really necessary?

At 1 we headed by taxi to the seaport. It wasn’t until this point when I pulled out my GPS and realized that our hotel wasn’t anywhere near where I thought it was. We were on the other side of the airport. It would have been cheaper to take the hotel’s shuttle back to the airport and then a shuttle or cab from there. I guess the direct cab was faster and with less hassle.

Once we got to the port, a porter took our bags immediately at 1:30 even if you couldn’t board until 2. it would have been nice to know that ahead of time. We decided to do whatever exploring we could and headed back towards downtown. Here we did a dumb tourist thing and walked across this half-mile bridge in the breakdown lane. We failed to notice the sidewalk on the other side.

We made it across safely and walked through a shopping mall and down to a park. There wasn’t much to see, but it was nice to walk around even if it was hot and humid. Soon we realized that we had made a poor choice in footwear. Tevas are not good for extended walks. The blisters came quickly and numbered many. Anne had taken a walk earlier in the day. Between the two excursions she developed a really nice tomato-like color.

We walked back (taking the sidewalk this time) and made it back to the port just as my parents, sister and my mother’s friends arrived. We quickly checked in and boarded. Ok, I think the vacation is really started now.

The first order of business was to drop off some stuff in our room and then hustle down to the cafe which was only serving lunch for another 30 minutes. I’ve been wary of the glutton that I could be come on an all-you-can-eat cruiseship. What did I have for lunch? Roast beef, mashed potatoes, fried chicken and some ice cream. Well, they were small portions.

After more exploring, we headed for dinner. We had a nice table by the window. The only consolation of taking in all these calories is the enormous number of stairs you end up climbing each day. There are 13 floors and the elevators are slow.

At the dinner table I left my phone out to how long I would keep a signal. It flashed green for a while, then red, then green again, then red consistently. I was disconnected. I thought that Internet access was $10/day, but I was wrong. It was $10/day to rent a wifi card for your laptop. It was $0.50 A MINUTE to actually access the internet. I’m so used to being connected all the time that I couldn’t even imagine how long it would take to do what I wanted. Fifty cents a minute seemed ridiculous though, so I decided to just live with being disconnected.

We exited dinner to go to a comedy show, or at least we thought. There was 20 minutes of the cruise director, the director’s assistants and the very cheesy cruise dancers. I recognized one of them from muster drill. You gotta wonder what half these people do on the cruise when they aren’t doing what they’re here for. The comic finally came on for 20 minutes of his PG-rated show.

After a few hours of relaxing, we went up to the pool and had a nice swim. There was hardly anyone around. It surprised us that the hot tub was fresh water, but the pool was salt water. There’s something strange about floating in a body of salt water on a boat floating in a body of saltwater.

I don’t know where these stories of midnight buffets come from. It was nearly impossible to find a snack to eat late at night. We wandered the ship for a while before we finally found some hor d’orves outside the casino. The casino is a depressing place. It’s clogged with cigarette smoke and full of retirees mindlessly plopping in quarters.

We failed again getting to bed at the right time for the timezone, but I resolved to start correcting that at 8 am the next day.