Just woke from a powair shnutch
A power shnutch is defined as a quick but deep slumber, a powair shnutch is a deep but needed slumber from take off to beverage serving on the plane. And now hydrated with diet coke we can go on with business.
At 4:00 sharp, give or take a few minutes the previous Friday we left for Akron airport , with a furious attempt to avoid the rush hour which wasn’t bad and made it with plenty of time to spare. It was just a chance that in a Friday we were searching for a TGI Friday’s which was not there, but boarded the plane on time and exchanged planes in Atlanta, and arrived in ft Lauderdale just before midnight.
Then a 15 minutes wait to the shuttle, and away we went , and with an impressive short cut, came right back to the airport, so we waited for 20 more minutes. We headed south on the I-95 till traffic began to pile. Which is strange to see lots of traffic after midnight. We felt right at home from the many signs of road work and they closed the entire high way. This road goes all the way to new York and more and they just close all of it[ not the whole road, just a section]. So our shuttle took us through the Miami neighborhoods and our fellow shuttle passengers who were familiar with the area said that this is not a neighborhood you should go through , unsafe, but we had no choice, since we were not driving, but safely made it to Miami south beach to a milady smelly but nice hotel. We crashed and woke to a beautiful sunny day. It is now about 2-3 degrees in Cleveland and a sunny day is more than welcome. We jogged on the boardwalk for 40o minutes. While I was training for months, alla didn’t run in a few months and still she was running easily ahead of me while I was struggling to keep up ( and failed). My mom and moti were there as well and they were walking on the beach and tried to convince a cop that a live black cat was actually dead. The cat was simply napping on the boardwalk, unsacred by the many joggers and looked at ease as only cats can be.
In another part of the world, another cat managed to wake them up at night here in Miami. How is that possible you ask?
Well this is Tom, my mom’s cat and he is the master of the house. He has a spot that triggers the alarm, he goes there whenever he wants to go out and there is no one awake to open the door. So the security people called them.
After the jog, we went for a swim in the ocean. The water were not warm, but far from cold and we enjoyed the shark free water (if we didn’t see them , they weren’t there). afterwards we all went with Venezuela Cecil (she is my distant cousin by rescue (long story…another time)) to Lincoln street, which is a nice street with shops and restaurants and no cars. We had brunch at a middle eastern place for some good food. I had Bide, which is some kind of flat bread pizza, never heard of the dish before and some humus like spread made from walnuts which was good.
We said goodbye to Cecil and continued walking the Miami strip, then came back to the hotel to rest, and after a dinner, we met Yaron, revital and the kids who just landed.
Later we went to check out the newest hotel on the strip which was rumored to be impressive, and it was. Water fountains, lights, you cannot really describe impressive, I guess you will have to wait for the photos. We went with the kids to a very fancy shmency bar that you don’t take kids to, and tried their chocolate cake which was excellent. Than everybody but us went home and we stayed to check out the scene (since when am I saying so check out so many times). This was a trendy place and lots of locals came to the dance bar, there was a silent completion on who wears the shortest dress and the highest hills.
Next morning we met for breakfast and took a shuttle to the cruise and met Inna, Igor, Dina, Aron and the kids (my family just got a lot bigger recently), and boarded the Norwegian jewel.
We went to our window less cabin on the bottom floor adjacent to the kitchen and the Laundromat (it was not really, but we laughed that it was). The cabin is small like any cruise cabin but the no windows thing was great, since we slept in every morning with no light to wake us up.
We took a personal tour of the ship which was smaller than previous ships I have been on, but this was Alla’s first cruise. We went to the Jacuzzi a couple of times and the pool only once the whole week.
Food is always the problem on a cruise so I made a deal with myself to avoid bread the whole week. It was tough since I love bread with butter, and they have lots of cakes, banana cakes and corn cakes which I love!, but I stayed away. Don’t get me wrong, I ate a lot, but bread makes it worse, since I eat more things with it. The cruise main problem was the ice cream, I ate so much! The food was good, not great, but good and a lot from it, server all the time.
In the afternoon of the 1st day they had an on boarding party with line dancing and a conga line, with various dance to the sounds of Uprizing, the ships Caribbean band. They had 2 more sessions of line dancing, unfortunately they were identical repeats of the 1st one, I don’t know why they can’t invent few more dances, it is less fun with the same things. They had games on the ship. We tried to volunteer for the ‘newly weds and not so newly weds game’ where they have 3 couple answer embracing questions and try to match answers, they took the most newlywed couple which was not us, a 20 year married couple and a 62yrs couple). The game was fun but had exactly, word for word the same questions they did on another cruise ship of another company. The lack of originality is my theme for this cruise. It seems like they try to be identical to others, so when you have to chose a cruise company, the company does not matter, only destination and price. I find it odd, but whatever…
The 1st entertainer was aeeee – not great, some comedian who tried to hard, the 2nd was great. It was a puppet and her handler. The puppet Mathilda made us laugh the whole cruise. They had a vocal band as well, a kind of new age barbershop quartet named the cats pajamas which was very good. We sang kareoki, I sang Delilah again, and Alla made her Karaoke debut with a duet of “I want you to want me” which was good in the Corus, not so good in the rest, but I want to want her so we need to practice for the next performance.
The kids sang a few song including Yesterday and ghosts busters.
Both families were a great match from the get go, which was great to see and enjoy, you never know how these things turn out, but we were happy it was smoother then the calm ocean.
They had dance shows as well with the ships dance crew with lots of flip flops, dance and song with a Broadway style. But the most impressive was the rubber lady.
A couple of acrobats. The woman was probably Russian with rubber limbs. And made her body twist in unbelievable angles, you had to see it to believe it. In one move she held her legs while bending backwards and made a circle, then her partner held her up in mid air and dropped her on him. She dropped in this ring shape position and he opened his legs like a stop ramp and the ring stopped on the legs, I have no idea how someone can be this limber, but it was wow after wow.
We learned how to Cha Cha and how to fold napkins in different ways.
They had another sow of dancing with the jewel stars, some of us signed for that, but it was a raffle and we didn’t get in. so guests were dancing with the crew in a dance off and the winner was a 75 year old woman who dance pretty good in general and was shaking her grove thing. The next day they tough us how to swing, Alla chose to sun tan, and I went dancing with Marge, the 75 year old dancer. I am allowed to dance with other women if they are celebrities and a winner of a cruise dancing with the stars is a celebrity.
We went to a ping pong tournament on a windy table. Alla was playing with this kid who was trying to show off by playing Chinese style, he soon found out the showing off does not pay off and was creamed. I nervously defeated too others , and Alla beat another dude and we met face to face on our anniversary in the final. Sorry I am no gentleman when it comes to serious things like ping pong.
Which anniversary you ask, well it was a triple event- on November 23rd.
It was our 2 weeks marriage anniversary, 6 months to the day since we got engaged and 18 months to the day since we started dating! How awesome is that!, I don’t think the stars will align so well in the future.
Landing now, this ends part one, and I didn’t get to charmaine…
