We're back from our summer vacation! It was great! Full disclosure, there were moments of pure misery (children crying, me crying, cancelled flights, phone calls from our alarm company that our house was being robbed), but the good definitely outweighed the bad, by a lot!
 |
We went on a cruise and I think we had just as much fun on the boat as we did on the excusions. In Venice, where the ship launched, we had to take a small wooden boat to get the cruise ship. Daddy told Claudia (on the little boat) that we were on the cruise. She said it was "nice." She was amazed when we got to the port and saw all the actual ocean liners.
|
 |
This was my first time on an ocean liner too. I had to repress my awareness that it was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic in order to fully appreciate the experience. And I did! We all did. These boats are amazing. They're so big. They have all sorts of dining rooms, theaters, shops and pools. They even had Build a Bear for goodness sake!
|
 |
It was all too much for me, but just enough for Claudia, who thoroughly enjoyed playing in the Kid's Club and eating her way through literal piles of bacon and chocolate donuts for breakfast every morning. Can you believe that the people working on the boat would stop Claudia in the dining areas and ask if she would like Nutella on anything? They'd paused for a moment after the rhetorcal question, then they'd slather Nutella on her donuts.
|
 |
Some of our (mine and Russell's) most pleasurable moments were reading and watching the sights from the balcony while Paddy slept and Claudia played in the "Aquanaut Club". Someone asked Claudia if she'd like a tour of the captain's control room or the "bridge" as they kept calling it. Moments before we entered "the bridge," they conditioned their invitation, cautioning Claudia not to "cry, scream or push any buttons." Despite the temptations, and the 1 million blinking buttons and knobs, Claudia managed not to cry, scream or push any literal or rhetorical buttons. She even got to sit in the captain's seat and wear his hat.
|
 |
Paddy and CC had fun playing in the room as well. The kid's club and baby nursery let us take out toys from the playrooms to keep in our cabin. Amazing! I wish I had taken a picture of it, but Claudia's favorite was a Fisher Price Little Person doll that she was convinced looked "just like Memaw!" We also enjoyed a few ocean liner races and playing mini golf on the top deck.
|
 |
We took lots of strolls on the quiet 4th floor deck. Here's Claudia helping break Paddy of the paci. The sequence goes as follows: (1) Nobody's really watching (2) pluck! You don't really need this baby brother!; (3) see Mom, he's fine without it; (4) You're welcome, Paddy. She can deprive him of his paci and he still loves her.
|
 |
Paddy enjoyed playing in his ducky pool on the balcony (since he was not allowed in the main pool due to "diaper dependency"), while Claudia enjoyed line dancing with the old biddies and swimming in the main pool. The boat itself was a real treat. Again, there were moments of misery, but since no one really likes to hear about those moments and I don't take pictures of those moments, I'll just go ahead and share the good... which includes stops in Bari, Italy, Corfu, Athens and Mykonos Greece, and Dubrovnik, Croatia. I'm still sorting through my 900 (yes, 900) pictures, so more to come.
In the mean time, it's so nice to be back in Budapest and Claudia started her first day of Pre-K on Tuesday. She's moving on up and seems to be really liking it.
|
