When we woke up Saturday morning, we could feel right away that the sea was rolling a lot more than it had been all week. We had to brace ourselves when walking around. Some of us experienced a little bit of seasickness that day. Pictures don't do justice, but this was a tiny bit of the wake off the side of the ship.
There was a towel-folding demo that A & I went to in the morning. 3 stateroom attendants demo-ed 2 animals each. They make it look so easy!
L-R: teddy bear, dog, turkey, bird in a nest, cat, bunny
Our favorite was the cat.
During the week, more and more Christmas decor kept popping up.
Gingerbread houses at the entrance of the buffet...
It got cooler the farther north we got- by evening a sweater felt good again. We packed our suitcases, preparing for departure in the morning. With the sea being so rough, we felt ready for the cruise to end.
By the time we woke up Sunday morning, we were close enough to TX to have cell service so we turned our phones on. That is when the text messages from the previous week started rolling in and we were shocked to learn our grandbaby was almost born while we were gone! There was some concern about toxemia and the doctor had considered delivering. While our greatest concern is for the health of our grandbaby, it would've been hugely disappointing to miss the big event. We're grateful he/she stayed put and the symptoms cleared up. JS made the right decision not to contact the cruise line with an emergency message for us; we would have fretted but not been able to do anything about it since we were stuck out in the middle of the ocean that day.
We opted to carry our own luggage off the ship because we could disembark at 8:30am; if we would've had the porters handle our luggage it would not have been available till 10:30am. These people have got luggage handling down to a science, but it is amazing how much luggage some people have! Multiply that by 4000 yet. Wow! Just wow! We headed to the elevators at 7:45, but we waited and waited and waited. The elevators were packed full -everyone else was going down with their luggage, too. Finally we saw it's not going to happen; we decided to forget the elevator and lug our suitcases down 2 flights of stairs to the dining room where we were assigned to go. When we got to the dining room there were 2 very long lines of people ahead of us. We tried to get to the back of the line but it was impossible, so we parked ourselves at a table and waited till the end of the line came to us. The ship had an organized system for disembarking, but people were not following it- everyone was in line and pushing for the exit even if it wasn't their assigned time slot. Unbelievable. The line snaked the whole way around the ship on Deck 4, but people were satisfied because they were moving. It was almost comical, if you stop and think about it.
While we were in line to disembark, of course the truck driver among us had to take pictures of the trucks bringing supplies to the ship.
Just look at all those skids of food!
For one week, on one ship.
In the gangway there was an awful stench. What a welcome back to the USA! It smelled like they were unloading the sewage from the ship and something went terribly wrong. We breezed right through customs, then caught our shuttle van back up to Houston airport.
Our shuttle driver was a native Texan that maybe could use a geography class, bless his heart. For a number of us, our closest airport to home is actually in the next state over; like the ladies in our load from PA who were flying into Baltimore. We had him so confused he asked how far Pittsburgh is from PA. 😁
From the airport we caught a shuttle van to the rental car place. I had booked a mid-sized car because the website said mid-sized fits 5 people and 3 suitcases- we were 4 people and 3 suitcases. The ladies at the rental agency were skeptical that we'd fit in a mid-sized, but they took us outside to the row of mid-sized cars and let us pick whatever we wanted from that category. JR was sure we wouldn't fit either, but never underestimate the master packer among us- R got all 3 suitcases and a duffel bag in the trunk of that 2016 Jetta and away we went. (I will admit it worked better to have JR sit in the passenger seat up front, on account of leg room.)
We drove about 3 hours north to Lott Texas area, to visit a former schoolmate of R's. When R was growing up, there was 3 R Millers in the same church; these are sons of 2 of them. They haven't seen each other much since that Miller family moved to Texas.
The kids & I had never met these people before [refer back to trip post #1, about our differing philosophies on chatting with strangers]. We trailed around after them, attending a wedding reception of a nephew and their church Christmas supper with them. I've gotta hand it to them- they did a fine job of hosting us. People are people everywhere you go, and usually have more in common than first meets the eye. I doubt I will ever be a fan of meeting new people, but I'll admit it doesn't kill me. At 9pm we managed to drag R away and we drove 30 minutes to Waco Texas.
The people of Lott know that anyone from up north coming their way on vacation will be making a stop at Magnolia in Waco. What amused me is that not a single person had anything positive to say about Magnolia. In a can-anything-good-come-out-of-Nazareth? kind of way. We were warned by multiple people not to have our expectations too high. I can only assume they've had experience with people traveling all that way to visit the great Gaines empire and leave disappointed. A & I were not among them; we LOVED it! A & I are pretty sure we need to go again when we don't feel rushed by the men and R insists he will take us again, but it's mutually agreed that he will drop us off at Magnolia and visit his friend while we spend the day there. Win-win.
Mon, Dec. 18- it was quite foggy so we waited till 9:30 to venture out. I was surprised how many people were already at The Silos in spite of the weather. If you aren't familiar with Chip & Joanna Gaines/Magnolia/Fixer Upper, I do recommend read the book(s)!
I feel privileged to have been able to visit at the magical time of year.
#over 1500
Unless you count a sail around the Caribbean in that total. Then it would be a lot more, like 3300 nautical miles more.
They only allow so many people inside at a time, and they gave us an order form before we got inside which sped up the process.
We got their Winter Wonderland special. Clockwise from top left: Shiplap (white chocolate), nuts & bolts, s'mores, peppermint (red velvet). They were all fabulous!
Gorgeous flowers/plants everywhere. Even in December.
So cool to actually be there.
Since we tolerated 7 hours in Lott, A & I didn't feel the least bit guilty about taking our time shopping while the men suffered through 2 hours of the damp outdoors. Sounded like there were plenty of men to visit with [refer back to 'chatting with strangers' philosophy again] aka gripe about giving up one's 'man card' to be there. I will admit much of their product is overpriced, and in some cases similar decor can be purchased at chain retailers for a fraction of the price, so we tried to be smart with our souvenir dollars. My very favorite purchase is the kitchen towel (which was half price by the way)...
We walked down the street to the Dr Pepper Museum.
Next we went to Waco's suspension bridge. Allegedly there is a riverwalk there but at this time of year it's a bit disappointing. A mini San Antonio it is not.
Legend is that the cowboys used to drive cattle across this bridge in the late 1800s.
Just then it started to rain. So we left Waco and headed back down to Houston. We drove in rain the entire way, but lucky us it waited to rain till we were basically finished in Waco.
We had one more thing on our bucket list for Texas. We wanted some real Texas BBQ. It's hard to know which place to choose when you are going strictly on online reviews... some people aren't happy unless they are complaining... so we took a stab in the dark and picked a little hole-in-the-wall operation near our hotel. We were like the only people eating there. Maybe there was a reason for that.
Something we experienced on this trip was that all our hotels in TX had fake drapes at the windows. There was only a sheer over the window, which does a poor job of blocking light. In Houston the street lights were shining right on the bed. Us country folks aren't used to that.
We flew home on Tues, Dec 19.
"The tans may fade, but the the memories last forever."
-Royal Caribbean
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