Sunday, January 29, 2012

weezer cruise!


loved this touch
we are back from the weezer cruise! whoo boy best vacation in the history of vacations! despite my constant, as maggie says "pre-diarrhea feeling" (henceforth known as PDF) leading up to leaving, in which i asked every tom, dick, and harry if they would pray for me/send me good vibes/light a candle/etc. while i traveled i was pleasantly surprised how little i freaked out compared to how much i anticipated i would! i sat and prayed with my good friend jamie and we both had a similar vision of me traveling in a bubble and that no one could enter that bubble without Jesus's consent and knowledge. good grief did i feel that! i got on our first flight and dude next to david had a samaritan's purse tshirt and the person across the aisle from me was reading a devotional on his ipad. TEARS DUDES.

dinner in miami

hotel in miami
since we purchased the cruise tickets through groupon we also got a free, one night stay in miami. schwing! so we arrived a day early and hung out near bayside/downtown for the evening. our hotel was swamped with weezerians and i heard all of the downtown hotels were the same. there were two cruisemate meet-ups but we skipped both to watch a pbs documentary on whales. /nerdtalk. also, i saw a girl working at the restaurant that we ate at that looked like a clone of billy piper (from doctor who) and i creeped her until she was probably uncomfortable. "sorry" my only regret about our time in miami is that we didn't eat somewhere more "miami". i really wanted some cuban food but we were so HONGRY by the time we went out that we were just like EAT ANYTHING, ANYWHERE NOW!

oops

rivers cuomo after the intermission

we boarded the boat around noon on thursday. i've been on a cruise before but this was so much more exciting because everyone was of our average age and there for a more singular purpose. i was nervous that our room, being without a window, would make me/us feel claustrophobic but it was great and more spacious even than the last cruise we'd been on. sidebar: this cruise was carnival and our previous cruise was on royal caribbean. there was some quantifiable differences between the two for sure. the royal caribbean had better formal dining food and cleaner bathrooms, but like i said, our room was bigger and this boat had more to do like a waterpark and mini golf. first and foremost the ship went over safety and life boat procedures naturally. i've heard that the boat that sank near italy didn't do this so they are even more strict about it now. immediately concluding that the whole boat rushed to the outdoor pavilion to see the first weezer show. somehow magically we ended up in the front row, literally touching the stage. they played the entire blue album with all the hits. it was amazing! later that night dinosaur jr. played the first of their three shows on the ship and HOLY TOO LOUD BATMAN! someone in the weezer shipmates facebook group said that their son ruptured his eardrum during the set and i don't doubt it. both david and i's ears rang for two straight days and we only ended up staying for a handful of songs because it was so unbelievably loud! the topper to the first day was a movie under the stars hosted by brian bell. i sat under the stars, snuggled in my weezer snuggie, and watched one of my childhood favorite movies, young frankenstein, while nomming on pizza (which was free and available 24/7 ill add).

windy morning mini golf

roughing it
the next day was much the same pleasure. we played mini golf, rock and roll bingo, and lounged in the sun listening to amazing music while staring at the ocean drift by. they had a large water slide and we went down that a few times, swam in the salt water pools, and generally interspersed lazy times with good food and amazing shows. the best band of this day was a band called Boom Bip, who were very boards of canada-y. we spent an hour laying in the sun while these guys played on the deck. it was kind of perfect. we met some amazing brazilian guys at dinner wherein one of them and i talked about doctor who for an hour. the five of us hung out off and on for the rest of the trip and keep in contact now through instagram and facebook. the only downside of this day was when we went to a game show where weezer was the contestants answering jeopardy type questions. there was an incredibly drunk girl that was obnoxious that shouted out every answer from the crowd and somehow got up on stage. it was baaad. the boat goers were generally wasted the whole time but she was the only one the entire trip that was drunk to the point on infringing on our good time.

our ship is bigger than yours!

view from our beach in cozumel

Very sweaty finish at the Amazing Race Cozumel

mama linda's lunch in cozumel.
saturday was the best overall day in my opinion. that was the day we hit port in cozumel. the last time we were in cozumel we went snorkeling, which was amazing. in another part of mexico we saw the mayan ruins. so both of those options were out. we ended up doing a version of the amazing race (like the tv show) because we are such big fans of the show. knowing this was coming i was even more pumped to get into better shape for the cruise because a) it was very physical and b) dudes, i wanted to win! if you've never seen the show, it's basically like a big scavenger hunt where one clue sends you to the next, sends you to the next. the difference is that to get a clue you typically have to do something to get it such as perform a task (like a local custom for example) or decipher a cryptogram. im big into mysteries and following clues and all that so this was perfect! some clues sent us to a museum, a market, snorkeling at a sunken ship, local businesses, a tattoo shop, local landmarks and statues, and restaurants. at one point we were 5-10 minutes up from everyone else but we got caught up when we misread a clue and wound up getting third place overall. the restaurant we finished at provided an amazing lunch and drinks. we approximated that we flat out ran at least 4 miles, which would explain our major sweatiness in the finish line photo. i would do that again in a heartbeat!

after the race we went shopping for an hour or two but we so dead tired that it was kind of joyless on my end. some dude offered us weed or anything else we'd want. (we declined) we got augustine a real mexican whip, olive a doll, and me a hugenormous toblerone. we got back to the ship around 4 and had two hours to kill before the next show we wanted to see so we got straight into a hot tub. sweet baby jesus did we need it! we went to see dinosaur jr. again, this time outdoors so it wasn't near as ear shattering. then we had a formal dinner where we ate ourselves sick. i believe somewhere after that we both fell asleep watching a movie. we had just enough time to relax and power up before we saw our second weezer show. this one was inside a concert hall of sorts and everyone had assigned seats. our seats sucked but hey, they were playing the pinkerton album so we didn't mind! this show felt different than the first but just as sweet. the first show was the blue album and radio hits, this one was pinkerton, b-sides, and favorites that the shipmates had voted on.

so glad we did this

BRB still geeking
sunday morning we got up, got fancy, and renewed our vows with scott (the bassist from weezer). it was short and sweet but i found our vows romantic. scott seemed genuine in his belief in marriage so that was nice. i was worried that it would be silly and not serious but i was proved wrong. as we were killing time before the ceremony started the host gave the mic to a seeminly random guy hanging about and the guy proposed right there in front of everyone! it was so sweet! right before lunch we got our photo taken with the band. david specifically forbade me from "getting handsy" with brian bell. LOLforever! i still stood behind him though and didn't geek too much. basically we filed in cabin by cabin and they snapped a photo and you left. it was very quick and you couldn't talk to them or anything. when looking at the website where our photo was hosted you can see that one guy got down on his knee and proposed right in front of the band, in the photo! again, so freaking sweet! i mean what a once in a lifetime opportunity.

so yeah, that pretty much sums of the boat portion of things: a lifetime opportunity.

thank you card from the band
the flight home was okay. our flight from miami to atlanta was delayed an hour or so which made our connecting flight insanely tight. i never thought we'd made it. by the time our plane landed our next flight was leaving in 10 minutes. my anxiety started kicking in and i started freaking out a little. it didn't even matter if we missed it really but any diversion from our plan threw me off and made me nuts a little. so i started getting really emotional as we were boarding (luckily the terminals were only two gates apart! thank you Jesus!) because of that. then a group of little kids were on our flight and one had a backpack that said olivia. i had this strange realization that i hadn't thought about the kids very much while gone and now i was so close to seeing them again. add those two things together and the fact that i was generally travel weary, had taken 1 1/2 ativan, and had had nothing but junk food (tea + toberone + french fries basically) and i ended up in the toilet getting sick and crying my eyes out for a few minutes. afterward i felt much better and snuggled on david's shoulder until we got to columbus. when we were picking up our luggage saw spied two little kids with welcome home signs running towards us and well, you can imagine how it went from there!

so glad we did it! so glad we are home!

4 comments:

Ashley said...

This sounds like SO much fun. I want to see the whole blue album in concert!

There was a 311 cruise that I'd have loved to have gone on. Not this year, for sure, maybe next year?

Ok - I'm gonna nerd vibe with you. The whale documentary on PBS, was it the sperm whale one? With the one lady who helped take apart the one (dead) beached whale, and was all super into it and interesting and just jazzed about explaining the whale's anatomy? If so - wasn't it so awesome?! :)

I'm glad you had a good time.

Olive said...

YES THAT WAS IT! it was so interesting! how much freaking spermaceti did that thing have in it!? it was like watching a water bed pop!

Olive said...

oh! and we've started recording that series. same lady dissecting a large python this past week. very interesting but not as interesting as the whale.

meridith said...

this sounds like SO MUCH FUN! so awesome, thanks for sharing the stories. i love cruises and going on one with people your age and shared interests sounds like the best.