For those of you who haven't yet seen photos from the wedding, you can check out a sampling here:
reneelewisphotography.typepad.com/photos/mccartyAfter the reception, we stayed the night at the Executive Inn. On the way to finding our room, several people commented at how dressed up we were and wondered where "they were going." Duh.
We went back to our house to get our luggage and drop off some items from the wedding and reception that we wanted to keep. We picked up Jeff's luggage and then went to my house to get my luggage and drop off my wedding dress. Mom and Dad were going to drop us back off at the hotel since we planned to take the complimentary shuttle to the airport the next morning. When we pulled into the parking lot, Jeff realized that he had left our room keys on the table at the house. He ran in and had some more made for us.
In the room, we had taken 3 boxes of leftover reception food (yum) for dinner. One problem - no microwave. We headed to the hotel restaurant to find that it was closed. No microwave, no restaurant - no car. Back to the room and we ordered pizza.
The next morning we headed to the airport about 5:30 am. We had no problems checking in, went through security, got to the gate and boarded our plane. Our first stop was Atlanta. In Atlanta we switched planes for Miami. In front of us sat a couple who were obviously honeymooners as well. The woman still had her hair in a disheveled updo from the night before, and she and her husband were wearing matching Corona t-shirts, tapered leg jeans and identical K-Swiss tennis shoes. We later found out that we would be enjoying the wonderful privelege of cruising for the next 7 days with them.
Upon arriving in Miami, we immediately decided that it was a place we probably never wanted to be again. Between finding few people who spoke English, almost not having all of our baggage and seeing a woman riding a very large tricycle I soon realized that I was in the largest circus freak show ever. We stood in line for what seemed like 3 hours to take a Greyhound transfer to the pier and had our tickets taken by a very unhappy woman with very bad hair. Frightening.
At the pier, we made it through security, felt like that was smooth sailing (no pun intended), only to come into a very large room with about 3000 other people who were trying to do the same thing that we were. At that point, I had begun to feel very sick with a fever coming on.
From that point on, it took us about 2.5 hours to get on the ship, into our room, only to be called down for an insanely disorganized drill 15 minutes later. It was very long. Jeff refused to participate and put his life vest on and a woman in front of us had a major throw down with one of the Carnival crew members. The remainder of the evening consisted of a lot of eating, a lot of tylenol and a lot of sleep. This would continue through Tuesday morning when my fever finally broke and we arrived in Cozumel.
Here a couple of photos of the in between when I actually felt like walking around amongst the public:
Jeff on the top deck of the boat, after he figured out where the door was.
The cabin steward left a little "sculpture" for us after he found out that we were honeymooners.
As we were leaving, Jeff mentioned that his face was itching. When we got in the car, he turned the light on and had hives on his face. We headed back to the hotel for Benadryl.
Meanwhile, Jeff was highly effected by the drowsy side effects of his Benadryl.
