Booya!  Over a year and a half since I've done one of these!  Well, I went on a cruise with my friend Pete (whom occasionaly makes an appearance under the alias solidsnake21tmp).  So, I'll rant about that and post some pictures :)

The Road to Miami

We live in Seminole (right next to St. Pete and a stone's throw away from Tampa) and it took just over 4 hours to get down there.  Not much interesting happened on the way down there.  Handfull of cigarette's were smoked and many a bug met their end on the windshield.  We were told by a lot of people that all we had to do was get on "alligator alley".  I mean, every body made it sound like it was some big thing.  Well, we only saw one sign mentioning we were on it and there weren't no alligators.  Just a whole lot of trees.  Pete blurting out "treesus christ!" was the funniest thing said on the way down there.

We got down to Miami using our Yahoo! map just fine.  But when we actually got there and the ship is in plain sight: we're lost.  Probably spent 45 minutes to an hour driving around Miami just to find that damn port!  Oh well, we finally got there and had plenty of time.  Oh, and my metal belt-buckel totally set off the metal-detector before getting on the boat.  I felt like an idiot!

The boat we were on, the Majesty of the Seas, was freaking massive.  When we first got on Pete turns to me and goes "dude are we on the boat?"  I'm like "I think so".  After that long drive we headed up to to get some food from the buffet and some cold beer.  After that we headed back to our cabin to get our luggage and take a nap.  But we did wake up in time to snap some photos of Miami as the boat was leaving:

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And check out our cabin:

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Yeah, pretty small.  The door on the right is the bathroom and practically where I was standing holding the camera was the door out.

And here's a pic of me on top of the ship at night:

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Every night we went to this 'dance club' they had on the cruise called On Your Toes

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They start out playing some 70s music or something but after 11 you have to be 18 to be in there and they start playing some rap and the place gets really popular.  Not really a fan of that music, but I'm perfectly fine checking out hot chicks who like to dance to it.  What are they going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside their trunk?  Get get get me drunk.  Yeah.  It was a pretty cool place.  It was fun to sit at the bar and drink some beer, do some shots of kamikaze and down some jager bombs.

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Oh and here's a pic of me with my life jacket on:

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I am flash-face!  Everyone on the ship had to put their's on and go to their assigned "muster station" to get lectured on what to do in case of emergency.  Pete fell asleep in the chair he was sitting in.

Day 2: Nassau, Bahamas

The first place the boat took us was Nassau, Bahamas.  Unfortunately the weather really wasn't the great, but I still got some cool photos. 

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And it didn't feel like the cleanest place.  Very expensive to live in the Bahamas so there was a lot of people asking you to by this or that.  Some native actually sold us some stupid bracelt that he said his kids made (which I broke when we got back on the boat).  Yeah, we got ripped off, but oh well, it was only a couple of bucks.  We milled around in some of the shops for a bit, but we were getting hungry so we stopped into the Hard Rock Cafe to get some lunch.  They had some cool stuff in there:

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Ringo

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The Doors and some hot chick

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Really cool Jimi Hendrix poster

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Signed Nirvana poster

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Nine Inch Nails

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Sex Pistols

I thought all the stuff in there was really cool.  And I got to keep my Hurricane glass :)

It was looking like it was going to rain at this point so we went back to the ship.  Later that night we went back to On Your Toes again and met some chicks, this asian chick, Kris, really liked Pete, we actually saw her at the place every night after that.  More drinking going on and I actually was on the stage dancing with some chicks.  Fortunately for you (and me) no photos of me dancing! :P  Although I was totally trying to be John Travolta from Pulp Fiction.  It didn't work, but who cares!  It was fun!

Back in our Cabin we saw some thing they had on the tv about Coco Cay, our intended next destination.  It looked really awesome so we were pumped.  However, little did we know....

Day 3: From Darkness to Light

We woke to an announcement from the captain that the weather in Coco Cay was deemed unsafe for us to go there so they were taking the ship towards the keys (our final stop before back to Miami) to find some better weather.  We were pretty bummed that we wouldn't be going anywhere our third day, but we still did our share of drinking.  I took a nap for awhile and fortunately woke up to glorious sun and blue skies.

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Then later we hit the Casino:

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Yeah, we lost whatever money we gambled with.  But it's a lot of fun.  Those damn slot machines are addicting!  I had never gambled before so it was pretty cool to try out.

And we almost always ate at this pizza parlor on the top floor:

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Later that night we went to On Your Toes again where there was more drinking and smoking.  Then we went back to the cabin and watched Red Eye on the tv.  It was playing almost every day back to back.  I think we each knew every line in the movie by the time the trip was over.  Good movie by the way.

Day 4: Beautiful Key West

Talk about saving the best for last, Key West was absolutely gorgeous.

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The only downside was that since we were coming back from the Bahamas we had to check in with customs.  They called the decks of the ship a couple of a time to check in and by the time they were done with us it was about a quarter to 12.  We only had till 5:30 before we had to get back on the ship so we started walking around Key West.  We were going to head to the beach, but decided we can just do that at home so we signed up for snorkling tour of the coral reef.  Here's the boat we rode on:

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Close-up of me on the boat!

The coral reef was beautiful.  There was a lot of cool stuff to see, really neat looking fish.  The water was pretty cold, but it didn't bother me.  I was however a complete moron and took my shirt off.  Being a person that obviously never sees that much sunlight my back got fried.  Fortunately, as of this writing I'm back to normal.  But, man, it killed me for about a week after we got back.  We both used an underwater camera, but neither of us have yet gotten it developed.  I don't have a scanner, so I don't think I'll be able to post those, sadly.

All told snorkling was an amazing thing to do.  It took about 3 hours so when we got back we just went into a Ron Jon surf shop to buy some clothes and check out more places and take more pictures.

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A pretty cool looking bank

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Some monument

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Some museum

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teh boat

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bye-bye Key West :(

At night we did our usual On Your Toes routine.  Also went back up top to take some final pics:

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We went back to the cabin, bummed that early in the next morning we'd have to get off the pleasure cruise and take the road home.

The Voyage Home

We got off the ship fine.  No belt this time so got through the detector no problem!  Okay, we're off the boat and at the car but our adventures not over yet.  We head into Miami to get some gas, but getting out proves to be a challenge.  We drove around Miami, again, for about an hour.  I mean we went from the city to some residential area, to some bad parts where we knew we didn't want to be.  Nothing like seeing people alseep (will hopefully alseep) against some building to make you feel safe.  But we eventually found our way to the right road....or so we thought.

I can't believe neither of us thought to print out a map to get home.  We should've gone northwest to get home, somehow we end up going just north.  I start seeing signs for Vero and Coco beach and I turn to Pete and go "dude, we're still on the east coast."  Yeah, we were lost.  For awhile we were just going by theme park signs.  And finally we paid some ridiculous 8 dollar toll and it looked like we were in nowhere, I mean the type of setting teenagers get killed in horror movies.  But by shear luck we spotted a sign for Tampa and thus proceded to drive all the way across the state.  Despite getting lost like morons, we made really good time getting home.

Well, that was my vacation.  I have to say I had a total blast.  Sure the weather could have been nicer in the begining, but I did a lot of things I'd never done before.  Definitely a memorable and awesome expierience.

[QUOTE="Solitudeblood"] Dude, that’s freakin’ AWESOME! I’m so very glad you had fun, especially since you needed a vacation.

But why didn’t you take some pictures of you dancing?? So disappointing!:evil: Did you at least molest an androgynous cabana boy like you said you would? (You can e-mail me if you don’t want the others to know:wink:.)

Man I wish I was there… I’m freakin’ jealous, seriously.:cry:

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:lol:!  No, no cabana boys.  However, our state room attendandt would always take the bath towels and make some animal out of them and leave them on Pete's bed when we were out.  I so wanted to get a picture but Pete always dismantled it before I could!

[QUOTE="sidr"]Man, those pics make wish I was in Hawaii right now, smearing on sunblock and drinking. Sounds like you had a great time.[/QUOTE]

It would be ace to go to Hawaii.  I still can't believe I took my shirt off when we went snorkling.  My back totally made me look like lobster-boy!