Like Karen With An "M": Cruise 2010

At this point in the trip we could literally not remember what day it was or quite where we were. Nor did we care. (And we weren't alone - I heard several other people mention the same thing.)

That, my friends, is the sign of a really good vacation.

That day our port was at Georgetown, Grand Cayman. To be honest, I didn't know much about Grand Cayman other than what I had read about in John Grisham novels. (Seems to me he must have been there before because his characters always use Grand Cayman secret banks.) Anywho, here are a few little fun facts I was able to gleam during our visit:

The Cayman Islands are small. They're made up of three small islands in the Caribbean: Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Brac Cayman.

Grand Cayman (the island we were on) contains only 76 square miles of land. Little. (The other islands are considerably smaller!)
When Columbus went to the island (that guy was all over the Caribbean!), he thought he saw a beach made up of large rocks, which turned out to be sea turtles. He started calling the island Las Tortugas, and the nickname is still around.
'Tortugas' is really fun to say. Try it.
The islanders' main source of income used to be turtling (wait - is that a word?), but now it's their famous Cayman banks and tourism.
Lots of REALLY WEALTHY people own beach property there. We're talkin' Microsoft wealthy, if you catch my drift.
The main reason a lot of cruisers go to Grand Cayman? The Diamond industry.

Okay, so that last fun fact was truly a surprise to me. But I guess you can get some truly fabulous deals on diamonds and other gemstone jewelry there. If you're into spending that sort of money on jewelry. Which I'm not. (Lucky for Lance, right?)

So once we got to the island we had a look around at all of the fancy-shmancy stores, but no diamonds were bought. Sad.

But I did buy a really pretty Irish linen, hand-stitched tablecloth set. Doesn't everybody buy their Irish linen in the Caribbean? (Actually, my dad and grandmother have both raved about the store there so much that I knew I'd be in trouble if I didn't at least check it out.)

Then we did some more wandering and found this awesome tree:

(I loved that tree. If I could have stolen it I would have. It would look great in my back yard, I'm sure of it.)

We also saw this awesome, very loud rooster:

(While I really liked the rooster, I was not inclined at all to steal him. He would look terrible in my back yard. And probably peck the kids.)

There were chickens and roosters all over the place, which was weird because you could tell this was a pretty wealthy little island. I later saw a chicken crossing the street but didn't get my camera out in time. Comic tragedy.

We shopped a little more, and even went down into the famous Pirate's Grotto. (It's just a store; no real pirates. Talk about disappointing!)

Anywho, I know that reading about someone else's shopping and wandering adventures is not exactly enthralling, so let's skip over to the part where Lance and I decided to kill some time and make a visit to the national museum.

Because reading about a trip to a museum on an island you've probably never been to is way interesting!

I wasn't really expecting much at the museum. It was pretty small.

But it was actually really good! We learned a lot about the island's history, culture, and wildlife. We also got to see the recently discovered remains of the old 'gaol', which was pretty cool. It's also pretty fun to say, which we did, every chance we got, for the rest of the afternoon, like the geeks we are. (Pronounced 'jaaaaayyyyyoooooooollllll'.)

Here's Lance before we watched a short film about the Cayman Islands.

It was pretty good. Except for when this weird lady on a TV in the doorway showed up. It reminded me a little of the haunted mansion at Disney Land. (Doesn't Lance look like he's just been startled and yelled out "What the...?!?")

And of course I took the obligatory foot picture:

That's a window over an old cistern that had been discovered on the island. In college I did semester abroad in Israel and saw approximately 832 cisterns during my travels. So these feet are saying, "Oh geez, I thought we were done seeing these things." Also, "Did that water just skip? (There wasn't really water in there; it was just lighting done by a projector.)

There was also a very Disney-esque animatronic guy in one of the displays who talked about some huge storm that hit the island in 1932. It was so life-like it was a little creepy. Doesn't he look like he's trying to figure Lance out?

Okay, still don't believe that he's creepy? Try this.

After the museum we decided to hit the famous Seven Mile Beach. It was pretty.

But not that great of a beach. It was really crowded, and the beach itself was really narrow and littered with garbage. While we enjoyed the swim, it was all a little disappointing. Oh well.

We headed back to the port and did a little more shopping. The only reason I mention it is that we stepped into a Swarvoski crystal shop, just because I was curious to see what was in there. As we stopped to look at some colorful crystal birds in a showcase, within 2.5 seconds were accosted by a sales woman who kept saying "Which piece should I get out for you?" This was hilarious to me for several reasons:

I am sooooo not the type of person to ever buy a crystal bird. I am more the type of person to make fun of the people who do buy them.
We looked like literal beach bums. My hair was scraggly, we were damp and probably didn't smell too good, and we were covered in sand that just wouldn't come off. Did we really look like we could afford over-priced crystal birds?
A crystal bird would stand a better chance of surviving an F5 tornado in the middle of a field than on my book shelf at home with my kids.

I wanted to bring all three of these reasons up with the sales lady, but held my tongue and politely told her I had three small boys at home, who would make it their mission in life to destroy that bird as quickly as possible.

She countered this with, "Oh, you could maybe hang it from the ceiling? They couldn't reach it there?"

Lance and I looked at each other and just laughed. Obviously this woman did not have children. Nor had she ever heard of Joshie's super-human aiming and throwing abilities. (The fool!)

Still laughing about this, Lance and I decided to check out one more store: the Everything 20 store. I thought it would be like the Dollar Store, full random cheap stuff, only at Grand Cayman prices. (Something in the states that costs only $1 could very well cost $20 in Grand Cayman!) It turned out to be an EXCELLENT fresh water pearl jewelry store, where I bought several necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Lance was a good sport and carried my little basket. He even gave his opinion on pieces, which I promptly ignored. (Sorry, hon.) I think I got a little giddy. It made my day.

Next, it was time to make Lance's day... with a submarine ride.

You read that right.

Not that Lance didn't want to do any of the other excursions we had chosen, but this was the one I knew he realllly wanted to do. I was excited about it, but not as much as he was! (Going on a submarine seems like a very testosteroney thing to want to do, doesn't it?)

(Very random side note: before leaving on our cruise several people told us that we should visit the world famous Stingray City in Grand Cayman. We had thought about doing this but never got around to booking a tour. Turns out this was a good thing since the tours were all canceled that day due to an incoming storm. Apparently stingrays get a little grouchy in storms, and no one wants to be around a grouchy sting ray. Let alone 100 of them. Who knew?)

As we waited for the ferry that would take us to the sub, we took an obligatory foot picture. See the sand? It had been several hours since the beach, and the stupid sand would NOT come off. Annoying.

Finally, we got on the ferry...

and within five minutes we saw this.

Wait - what is that?

Closer...

There it is! Our submarine!

Lance had the camera. Can you tell by the number of pictures that he was eager for this trip? :)

We boarded the submarine. (Some of us unknowingly filmed...)

It was actually a really cool tour. We only went to a depth of around 125 feet, but that was fine because at that deep you start losing a lot of white light and everything just looks blue.

Not sure what's up with my smile in this one.

That's my foot. On a submarine. Didn't really ever think I'd be writing those words on this blog.

Here's a view of the inside of the sub. (Der. It would have been pretty hard at that point to take a picture of the outside, wouldn't it?)

Our tour guide was Jamaican, and thus very laid back and friendly. But he also knew a lot neat facts. Such as, do you know where sand comes from? I thought it all came from rock and coral erosion, but that only makes up 40% of it. The other 60% comes from Parrot Fish, which eat stuff that's on coral and eat a bit of the coral while doing that. The coral can't be digested, so it, ahem, comes out of the fish.

That's right. More than half of all sand is fish poop.

Which is probably why I could not for the life of me get it off my feet that day.

Gross.

We saw lots of fish and even barracuda, a turtle, and a stingray. Not that you can really see them in the photos, but we know they were there.

We also got to go down some of the side of a 1600 foot drop in the ocean floor. It was a little eerie. On one side of the sub all you could see was blue; on the other side was a fairly sheer wall of coral and fish.

We also got to see a mermaid. (Used as a landmark for scuba divers.)

And a WWII sunken ship.

All too quickly it was time to resurface and head back to our ship. (Which was good, because my neck was starting to ache from leaning over to see out those windows!)

That evening was another formal dinner night. Lance had been informed that if he had any other shoe-related incidents I would still be going to dinner, with or without him.

Once again, I started the process of primping and preening. This involved scrubbing about two pounds of fish poop (i.e., sand) off of me in the shower, and then taking a few shots out on the balcony as we sailed away from Grand Cayman.

I'm pretty sure I heard lots of Grand Caymananians whistling in the background. Or maybe it was just Lance.

No, it wasn't Lance. He was busy reading. I tried to take a picture of this rare event, but he decided to be a smart alec and put the book down just then. Punk. (I got him hooked on "The Hunger Games". Score!)

Once again I spent quite a bit of time getting ready. Lance took about 20 minutes, and that included his shower and shaving. But he did get his shoes!

Very shiny.

It must be mentioned here that while he took this picture he had shorts on, not dress pants. Stylin'.

My hair wasn't as big this time, but I was still feelin' pretty foxy.

Lance must have approved of my look.

We decided to get a few formal pictures taken before dinner. It must be noted here that Lance and I are notorious for rarely taking good pictures together. Seriously, one of us has our eyes closed, is looking elsewhere, is standing funny, or just looks like a dork. During this cruise that someone was generally me. But the photographer did a pretty good job and we actually looked pretty good! We even broke down and bought a copy of one, even though it cost around the same as six Jamaican Diet Cokes.

Now at this point I would usually post the picture. But I can't. Because Lance has stolen the computer connected to the scanner for his monthly LAN party tonight. Dang. Well, I'll just have to post it later. Trust me, we're pretty cute. Well, we're at least both looking at the camera.

But look - here's a picture our honeymooning table mates took for us during dinner!

Funny story: the honeymooners actually asked us first to take a picture of them with their camera. I did, and as I handed it back to them I asked if he would like take a picture of us? He gave me a funny look and then proceed to aim his camera at us, thinking I wanted him to take a picture with his camera. His new wife shook her head in exasperation and said, "She means with their camera!" Hahaha. Lance and I still laugh at that. Perhaps you had to be there.

Anywho, after dinner we had some time to kill before the comedy show we wanted to see. (New comedian, waaaaay better than the first one.) Normally we would have walked around the promenade deck a few times, but this was not really an option in my heels. (High heels + choppy seas + slickish deck = Maren Overboard) So we hung out for a while in the grand atrium. I think we saw a some singers and dancers and maybe a juggler. (My memory is already fuzzy.)

But we also entertained ourselves with these glamorous shots.