I am proud to confirm that the cruise was NOT a scam! It was actually legit and brought us to and from the Bahamas safely. However, don't pack your bags yet...hear my full story first.

The phone harassing began about 6 months prior to the trip. The cruise line would call every couple of weeks to try and up sell an extended 3-day package and book our flight, hotel, car rental etc. through their travel agents. Of course, I said no and Dan just got his own flight for about $300 (same as to Atlanta) and I drove the 8 hours from Atlanta to Orlando.

My drive was an interesting southern road trip. It began with beautiful vistas of peach trees, pecan farms, antique stores and don't forget- boiled peanut stands! Once I got a little further south, I saw my first cotton field. It felt like I was driving by some museum considering my only paradigm I have for Georgia cotton fields revolves around slavery. I guess I assumed most fields disappeared when slavery ended but apparently some must still be able to compete with the outsourced slavery that currently exists in places like China and India. And if the cotton fields were not symbolic enough, there were giant Perkins Restaurant sized Confederate flags along the freeway.

Well, anyway, the flags and fields turned to palm trees and billboards once I neared Orlando. I was so excited to see Dan and begin our trip! I met him at the airport (romantic meet up as my mom always says) and from there we went to the Waffle House for dinner (my choice). We stayed the night in West Palm Beach and woke up early to drive to Ft. Lauderdale to pick up our cruise passes. A man took us to the back room and tried to get us to sign up for an Orlando post cruise package. Good thing Dan was along because it sounded fun and its hard to say no to Disney. We didn't really get the point of driving all that way (1 hour from the port) just to pick up the paper copy cruise pass. Clearly they just wanted us to stay the night at that hotel and get suckered into more of their "upgrades".

On the way back up the coast we stopped for a walk along the beach and took a detour through some nice ocean front real estate areas. We got to the port around noon and waited in a few lines before arriving at our little box-car-like room. It was small but functional and we both sorta laughed and then said, well, at least it is clean! We then went up to the top floor for our all inclusive first meal of the trip but it was raining so we had to eat inside. The food got an all around 4 star rating. There was all you can eat pizza which made Dan extremely happy and I liked the ice cream stand, desserts with every meal and homemade waffle stand like we had back in college. The all you can eat probably doesn't pair well with the beach and pool activities but then again- it was vacation!

The first night we had a few tropical drinks, played cards, ate a nice dinner followed by some very mediocre entertainment. The ship had music, dancing, a comedian and a magician. However, the mean age of the cruise guests was more than double my age so the dancing party was not exaclty hopping. The singer was some sort of Celine Dion impersonator (not joking) and the comedian made tuesday night improv at Acme look like Comedy Central.

Then, then next morning we woke up in the Bahamas!! I will tell more about the second half of the trip soon. I needed a creative break from the MIS and Econ homework but this blog won't contribute to my exam grade next week so gotta go. TBC...