Oh.. and it's raining too!
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Visitor - this guy was in my yard just 10 minutes ago (love the speed of the results with Digital!)... yeah.. it's grainy... yeah it's blurry... but it's also really cool and actually not too bad of a quality considering they were taken thru a window at 40times magnification...
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Kitty - ok.. so I admit it... this photo needed some 'touch ups'... black animals are notoriously hard to photograph they just suck up all the light and refuse to let it go... so this one got a little lightening and little scewing to get the steps straight... but other than the inverted Daffodils... what you see is what I saw.. see... saw... saw... see! Whatever....
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Unfortunately it isn't all Daffodils and Tulips out there...
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It's not all Daffodils in the yard... here is one of my two tulips! Considering at one time I had around 70 of them and now have all of 2 I had to take a pic before this one disappears too!
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Inverted fun with Daff's
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Silver TP redemption...

So our Silver Toilet Paper Award winner has made an attempt at redeeming themselves.. If you scroll down you'll see that US Airways was awarded the latest STPA for our horrendous flight down to San Juan and I quote "Will be hearing from me." Well they did hear from me in the form of a letter to their customer service... We received a very nice letter the other day from US Air apologizing for the bad experience... Our biggest beef was the lack of information (customer service)that was offered by the airlines as we stood in line for 3 hours and not one person took the time to explain what they were doing to help us!! I can understand delays but it shouldn't take 13 hours of traveling and 3 different flights to get from Connecticut to Puerto Rico!

So anyway, in fairness to US Air, I thought I'd let you know what they did to 'make up' for the bad experience... we got the nice letter and inside there were 2 vouchers for future travel with them for $150 each. Now we just have to use them within a year and before this airline goes belly up (they are already in Chapter 11)oh.. and not to mention if we want to take the chance of having another vacation start out badly at their hands... I'm thinking....

VEGAS, BABY! :)

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It's all in your perspective!
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My Salmon colored Daff's... aahhh.. Spring!
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Signs of spring from around the yard... the grape hyacinth are blooming.. oh and the frogs are out!
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Side-trip - their doing a release of some of the overflow of the Quabbin... it's beautiful, exciting and seems a little wasteful all at the same time... all that lovely clear water pouring out of the reservoir!
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Docking in Barbados... that's another Royal Caribbean ship, one of their barefoot cruises where you can help hoist the sails if you want... notice the flying bridge on the side of the ship with our crew on it... very cool...
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When we finally got back to our cabin (that's me collapsed on the bed on the left of the pic.. happy but exhausted!) we had a really cool elephant towel animal awaiting us.. almost everyday we had a different animal awaiting us although one of them caused me and my husband to place bets on whether Alvaro our room steward had made us a swan or a sea serpent... He won... it was a swan... I still say it looked more like a sea serpent but hey... it was cute...
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A wood carving shop in St. Lucia (see story below)... check out the awesome flowers on the left of the pic... absolutely beautiful!
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St. Lucia w/ Mr. Ricky!

This port was one of the coolest and travel intensive that we did... starting with a 'water taxi' ride across the bay from the ship to the center of the town we docked in.. we were supposed to do the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ship sailing to a deserted island but our tour was canceled due to 'lack of participation'.. *sigh... that's what happens when the avg. age of your fellow cruisers is EIGHTY!... So we decided to wing it.. entering the center of town we were met by dozens of "take you on a tour nice lady?" people that offered taxi rides around the island... no thanks... no thanks.. no thanks.. the further we went into the island the cheaper the tours became... eventually we came across Vincent who offered us a 2 hour tour for 30 dollars each.. we managed to get him down to 15 each and off we went to get his taxi... upon arriving at his van we were introduced to "Mr. Ricky" our driver for the day... Mr. Ricky didn't speak any English as Vincent explained "I am the business man, Mr. Ricky is our driver".. seems Mr. Ricky doesn't speak english but he's got a taste for American cigarettes.. so I shared my smokes with him as he and Vincent took us on a LOVELY tour of their home...

We started up this HUGE mountain via many.. many.. switchbacks... very scary... as higher and higher we climbed... eventually the cruise ship in the harbor looked like it was an inch long!! About 3/4's of the way up this mountain Mr. Ricky quickly pulled over to the left and stopped in front of a little shanty type 'house'... as he jumped from the vehicle Vincent explained that this was not part of the tour but was Mr. Ricky's house and he needed to drop off a chicken for dinner.. as he walked to his little house with a mulit-million dollar view I glanced at the bag in his hand - that was no bucket of KFC in there!

Well our tour ended up more like three hours... with trips to a banana plantation.. overlooks at Marigot Bay (very gorgeous!).. a really cool and talented wood carving shop (look for pics of it to be posted above) with some of the most beautiful wood carvings that were only usurped by the beautiful flowers growing around the shop... a fort... and the governor's mansion.. our tour concluded not in the center of town where they had picked us up but right back at the pier in front of our ship... now that was SERVICE (not to mention saving us the cost of the water taxi ride back to the ship!) So needless to say Vincent (who turned out to be a GREAT tour guide - including our discussion of the national weed Ganji! ;) although he swore he only partakes once a day AFTER the work day is done! yeah.. ok... ) and Mr. Ricky got themselves a sizeable tip for the wonderful day they created for us... wonderful memories!!

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St. Lucia - HUGE mountains - if you look in the lower left of this pic you can see the Empress! BTW.. if you click on these pics you'll get a nice BIG version of them!
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The top pool deck of the Empress.
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Day 3 - Here is lovely St. Kitts, imho, the loveliest island of them all, unfortunately we didn't see much of the island, my husband did a scuba dive and I did just the pier. Oh well, we'll just HAVE to go back and check it out more thoroughly!
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No takers?

So.. no takers on the "Baby Carraige, Plum, Sweet Alice" question? hurumph* Their the names of brooks that cross under Bay Road... I think we need a quickie post here.. lots of things have happened since the last posting...

The rogue wave - uummm.. scary... we'll be on the sister ship to the Dawn in October for our trip to Bermuda... and by comparison, the Empress is pretty much the same size as the Dawn... we were on Deck 9 (the wave hit as high as deck 10!)... sleeping with the sliding glass doors open... hanging out on our deck... even when we hit the rough stuff... OH.. but I haven't mentioned our 2 days of Rock and Roll yet... really scary...

Popedom... so there's a new pope... frankly I found the whole process very interesting... a real quick peek into the 'old boys club' mentality that the Catholic Church does so very well.. my favorite part was when it was reported that the cardinals sent for "20 nuns to cook and serve us our meals"... yah... 20 chefs and wiaters? no... 20 priests and nuns? no... Pizza delivery? no.... send us 20 nuns to serve us... bravo... and the church races ahead once again... maybe in another hundred years they'll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the Dark Ages...

I'd like to propose a new prison program... sleep over parties... yeah.. that's right.. Sleep overs... basically how it would work is any prisoner could request a sleep over with any one of a 'select' list of other prisoners. The specially selected prisoner would then be sent to the requesters cell for the nite for an evening of uninterrupted 'togetherness'.... I'd really like to see this put into place for that waste of space that took that little 9 year old girl down in Florida.. yup... make him President of the Sleep Over Party!

Anyway... now that I've creeped you all out... that's it for today..

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Me.. on vacation! (note the clear blue in the upper right corner... that's right... that's me.. out on my private balcony on the lovely Empress of the Seas... OH.. how I miss it!)
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A break from the Vacation...

with the week I've had it certainly has been a 'break from Vacation'... sad to say that nice calm "I'm on vaaccaaatttiioonnn" feeling is long gone and been replaced by "Oh man... I gotta get this done!!"... between server malfunctions (NOT my servers... thanks so much Purehost.com!) and client requests it's back to work with a vengenance!

Anyway... here's a little quiz for you Bay Roaders... What is the connection between these three things?
Baby Carraige
Plum
Sweet Alice
If you know the answer drop me a comment... unlike the last comment that some Porn Spammer decided to leave, I promise I'll leave it posted to the blog!

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Lovely St. Barts
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Hold that ship!

Ok.. so I got ahead of myself... I started with the port-reporting before I mentioned our adventures in air travel before our arrival at the ship... so we'll take a step back a couple of days in time (fitting - spring ahead an hour and jump back a couple of days!)

OH.. and while we're at it... This our "Silver Toilet Paper Award" winner as well...



We haven't had one of those in awhile... (here's the scoop on the STP Award in case you missed it!)

So which airline is our winner?

US Airways!

We took our flight out of Bradley Airport into Philiadelphia - as scheduled - arrived in Philly for our 1 hour layover before our flight on to San Juan, PR - stopped in the airport bar for a quick beer and something that was supposed to be potato skins.... Then proceeded to our gate for our flight into Puerto Rico... only to find that our next plane had "hydrolics problems" (not good considering that's what makes the wheels go up and down - we may have needed those!) Now.. keep in mind here that the Empress was set to sail at 8pm with everyone needing to be on board by 7pm... Our original flight was scheduled to arrive in PR at 2:21pm - plenty of time for the 20 minute ride to the dock and to check in to the ship...

On our flight from Hartford we began talking with some of the others on board the plane and realized that a good deal of our fellow flyers were also all booked on the Empress... there were 61 of us on that flight to be exact!

So anyway... standing in the airport in Philly they had our plane on 'hold' until at least 3PM and even then they couldn't be sure if it would be fixed... now... 3pm (maybe) plus a 4 hour flight to San Juan, equals 7PM!!! So we wouldn't be arriving at the ship till 7:30pm - a half hour after the last "all aboard" call!! DAMN!! So US Air started scrambling... first we had 3 people helping us... then 2... then 1 guy that admitted "this isn't his job - and I don't know what I'm doing"... great! We were left standing in the Philly airport for 3 HOURS!! With no word of what was happening... Eventually they took 10 people and put them onboard a flight to St. Thomas with a further flight into San Juan... Finally at almost 3pm they announced they had gotten us all booked on an American Airlines flight into Miami and then on to San Juan... and we have 5 minutes to get to the AA gate... somehow... with our luck we ended up the last in line to get our tickets for the AA flight... and of course we got a 'new' guy that seemed like he entered our info into the computer at least 5 times! Finally he hands us our tickets and sends us off to gate A1... running down the concourse we watched the signs... A19.. A18... A17... damn... run!! Finally arriving at gate A3.. A2.. B1... B??? B1?? Where's A1?? Seems.. there is no A1 in Philly Airport!! A security guard suggested we try A11... back we go... A9.. A10.. aahh.. A11!! yup.. ok.. right place... but hey wait.. these are flight COUPONS.. not boarding passes... get your butts in that line and get your boarding pass! GGRRR!! ok.. so finally we're on board and it's off to Miami...

Arrival Miami... disembark the plane and begin to look for our connection to San Juan.. which leaves in TEN MINUTES!! Hello Security Guard - which way to gate B22? Oh.. it's a TWENTY MINUTE WALK - that way! DAMN... We ran a mile and half thru Miami airport wheeling our bags behind us... we began to notice our fellow cruisers along the way.. first a 75 year old Toronto woman - traveling alone.. poor thing.. so Mr. 9 2 Bay gallently took her bag from her to lighten her load... then a little further we came across an elderly couple who had no wheels on their carry on they were desperately trying to get to the gate with their heavy bags slung over the husbands shoulders - one on each side.. well.. let's help them as well.. I took one bag on top of my wheelie and Mr. took the other.. so we did a mile and half dragging 5 bags behind us!! Amazingly we just made it!!

Arrival San Juan... AA was kind enough to announce to the plane passengers that there were 50 of us trying to catch our cruise ship and could everyone let us off the plane first.. very nice of them.. unfortunately no one listened and we had to fight our way off the plane.. nice try tho! Upon arriving at San Juan terminal we were greeted by our Royal Caribbean representative who resembled a prison gaurd at a woman's hi-security facility! Now.. I'm a smoker... and I hadn't had a smoke since Philly.. so I'm pretty desperate about now - and so are a couple of our fellow travelers... so I approach Betty the prison gaurd for info on where we can go grab a quick smoke... only to be told "we going to gather here and then all go down to baggage" and then on to the ship - it seems Royal Caribbean decided to delay the sailing of the ship for us... smart move considering we all had the insurance and they would have had to pay to catch us all up to the ship in St. Maarten! "There is no place to smoke"... so I give it another try... "you don't understand.. is there somewhere we can go smoke?" So Betty.. in her infinite wisdom replies "We are ALL meeting here, and then going on to baggage... there is no smoking... anyway.. it's a good time for you to quit!" That was it.... as I got an inch from her face I began with "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!! I've been pushed around... thrown on planes.. ran thru Miami airport... etc.. etc.. etc... and finished with NOW WHERE CAN WE GO SMOKE?!" all the while my poor husband was whispering in my ear "Their gonna call security!"

Anyway.. long story-short version... We arrived at the ship at 8:30pm - a far cry from the 2:21pm arrival that we were supposed to have... ate a quick buffet dinner and went to bed! Our original plane arrived 5 minutes behind us in PR so we got our luggage (unlike the 10 people that were sent to St. Thomas.. they received their luggage 5 DAYS into the cruise!!)

Not the best way to start a vacation... and US Airways is hearing from ME!... whew... so... the Silver Toilet Paper Award.. yes.. definitely a worthy recipient...

and next we'll go on to Day 3 of our lovely Caribbean holiday!

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Day 2!

Day 2 was lovely St. Barts! Playground of the rich and famous - and the occasional cruise ship! From what I understand even El Diablo Senor Bill Gates keeps a home and yacht on this island.. I also heard several stories about shop keepers closing up for the day when they see the cruise ship pull in to the bay, so very friendly!



I didn't make it in to this island - for a couple of reasons...

1. no dock - this one was just a tender, which means that the ship just drops anchor in the bay and these little boats come alongside and pick you up and take you to shore.. not quite ready for THAT adventure! and

2. Mr. 9 2 Bay 2 9 2 10 had that look in his eye.. the one that says "I'm gonna see as much of this place as possible in the time alotted!" and did he ever! He met up with a Professor from a Japanese University "Sanoo" and the 2 of them did a power walk of 5 miles around the island - in 90 degree heat... By the time they got back they looked like they had been dumped in the ocean - pulled out - and wrung out till dry.. well almost dry!

So what did I do while they were off adventuring? Schooner Bar for what became known as "my breakfast"... Strawberry Daquiris... yummy!! It was a great mornin'... thanks to Delano my breakfast bartender from Costa Rica (I learned alot about his country)... I even participated in the "Geography Trivia Game" that was being held.. which was pretty funny considering I couldn't find my way around the ship... add 2 servings of "breakfast" before 11am.. and the fact that I was playing alone while the others were all playing in teams and of course the inevitable was bound to happen... I WON!!! Even with answers like "Tryptophan is the country to the east of France"... So what was the grand prize that I won you ask?? Well.. considering how much people spend to be on the ship you'd think the prizes would be awesome... you know value for value... so what did I win... a shiney Royal Caribbean PEN!!! That's right... a pen... I'll treasure it always!!


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