A little too single minded

O, I know I've been a little single minded and probably boring, with my long posts about the honeymoon. Not that they're going to stop mind you, I'm just going to try to pepper in some more stuff. See? New feature today. There is also new garden news, good news, and this weekend is the 500! So, I promise more, okay? But, still, hold on for more honeymoon.

Would you Rather Weekend

It's a new feature! HOLEY BAZOLEY! Every weekend, I'll post (and answer) a "would you rather" situation. Your job, dear reader, is to do the same. So! The inaugural would you rather weekend comes from a book I bought:

Would you rather eat a cactus or a handful of pebbles?

First, I assumed that the cactus was the same size as the handful of pebbles. Even if it was bigger, I think, I'd still go with the cactus. Because, I could chew up each of the spines on their own and so maybe it wouldn't poke me as much. Plus, cactus is an actual edible thing, whereas pebbles, unless you are a chicken, aren't. Yum cactus. So, what would you rather?

Honeymoon Day 6 Grand Cayman

So after our day of crisping in the sun in Cozumel, we were scheduled to make a second stop in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. When we got up, we heard all kinds on instructions. There was no dock here big enough for our boat. That explained why when I looked at the satellite view on google maps, I didn't see one, yet I saw big cruise ships out on the water. So, to get to land, we had to take a boat. Most of the other cruise ships just dropped a couple of their life boats and used those, but we were different. We used a boat shuttle service that was based at the island.

Jason and I didn't have to be on a boat for a little while, so we went to breakfast at "The Summer Palace" It was beautiful and the service was great too. It made me disappointed that we hadn't been there earlier. We had a nice breakfast and then got ready to go on our next excursion, the 7 mile beach break.

It. was. raining. It was raining when we were on the boat, and as we boarded the buses to go to the beach the skies opened up into a big storm. I was majorly disappointed. We all sat on those buses looking at the rain. Finally it started to let up. The guides said that it would be a great day now, but I didn't by it. I thought, ugh, no beach today, sitting on a bus instead. But, they were right! It cleared up and turned into a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky for the entire time. We got us some rum punch, a chair on the beach and an umbrella to keep some of the sun off of our sunburned backs.

We decided to go into the water and it was LOVELY! We found all kinds of pieces of coral on the bottom, and picked them up with our toes to take them home. The water was clear and nice, and it was a lot less crowded than the day before. I got out of the water because I wanted to read, and a few minutes later, Jason came up and asked if I wanted to snorkel. I was surprised, because he'd had more difficulty the previous day than I had, and I thought that he would never want to snorkel again. I wasn't too keen on it at the beginning, but Jason talked me into it, and boy am I ever glad he did. We got out there and there were all kinds of fish! The water was perfectly clear all the way to the bottom and we saw tons of stuff. One of the first things we saw was this little octopus. I wish I had a picture. He was exactly the same color as the sand beneath him, and you could only find him when he moved. That was cool too. He would put all of his arms together, and then when he'd reached his destination, spread them all back out. That was, by far, the best thing we saw when we were snorkeling.

Jason would have me mention that I saw a fish in a hole. Not only did I see said fish in said hole in the coral, I yelled this fact out though my snorkel. One of my endless talents no doubt. In my defense, it WAS really cool, and I felt the need to let Jason know about it.

We only had so long at the beach, so we got dried off and dressed and piled back onto the buses. This time I had a bag full of rocks. We were hungry so we decided to eat at this place called "Breezes" It was so good. We had conch fritters, then I had a whitefish sandwich and Jason had coconut shrimp. It was by far the best meal we had on the whole cruise. We were impressed. After that, we went shopping.

I wanted something from Grand Cayman that really said island to me. I was looking for some artwork, but I never did find it. Instead I got a really pretty silk tablecloth, and some rocks. Honestly? I really like the rocks. We looked all around and ended up in a little store that had sand for a floor. There, Jason found some hot sauces, and we heard a song that will never go away.

It was a rum cake! A rum cake!

Yeah.

We saw a lot of overpriced stuff, a lot of jewelry. I had mine, so I wasn't that interested. We had our picture taken in front of some stingrays. At one point, we were walking down the street and poof! Chickens! There was a mother hen and a whole bunch of really cute chicks! We also saw a policeman in Grand Cayman. This time he didn't have a gun. He had a GIANT Doberman pincher. It was a really pretty dog, but the policeman didn't look like he wanted us to pet it. We wandered around until it was, sadly, time to get back on the boat.
Why do I look scared? That's a giant shower. I was afraid it would turn on at any moment.


Overall, Grand Cayman was way better than Cozumel. The people were nicer, you weren't afraid you were going to get mugged. It was like paradise. I know we only saw the most touristy part of the entire island, but I sure wouldn't mind going back.

We got to watch a beautiful sunset as we were leaving grand Cayman. It was the prefect day.
That night we ate at one of the bigger restaurants on the boat called "Indigo" it was good, but evidently not too memorable, as I have no clue what I had to eat. Oops! We saw a second city improv and sketch comedy show that night. They were funny, but not as good as I hoped, with the second city name on there. We also went up to 80's night and were entertained by funny costumes and a cover band that was actually, really good.

The bands on the boat were strange. They had a 3 man kinda reggae band on the pool deck every day, and every night they had another cover band in the main lobby area. They were STRANGE. We heard Johnny Cash, The Beatles, and strangely the BeeGees.

What we didn't know yet was that Jason had incurred some serious sunburn from our two days in a row of snorkeling. I was red, but he had blisters. It really caused him a lot of pain for the rest of the trip. I felt awful, because there was nothing I could do. Okay, I did do something to him. One of the blisters popped. I was worried about infection. So I went down to the ship's doctor, (who could offer virtually nothing for sunburn, but was willing to charge us $75 to look) and got some bandaids and alcohol swabs. Did you know that Jason can jump 3 feet straight up off the bed from his stomach if you put alcohol on his sunburn? Yeah. He can. I don't think he'll ever forgive me.

Onward! To our last day!

Honeymoon Day 5 Cozumel

After our first day at sea, we had managed to get our sea legs, but were soon to be rid of them as we were arriving in Cozumel at 7am. As we wandered off the boat, our camera lens fogged up, so I don't have a good picture of the strange giant parrot that greeted us on the dock. No, I don't mean some kind of exotic bird, I mean some poor crew member in a carpet suit. There was also a vaguely multi-ethnic woman dressed as a Mexican. They seemed to be holding the boat there with a big rope.

We had an excursion booked that would be a Jeep trip to a beach for some snorkeling, and lunch. On the way we were to see some ruins and other fun stuff. So we got there early, and when we get off of the boat, we had no choice but to walk into a big shopping complex. Here there were about 8 million jewelry stores. There was also this great big perch that looked like later would have a real parrot. Most everything was closed, so we wandered a while and then sat to wait. Jason saw this kid on a tiny bike selling newspapers.

Our tour group got together and went up some stairs to another level of jewelry shops. It seemed apparent that we were going to wait some more and some of the shops were open. We went into the closest and were looking at all of the stuff when a ring caught my eye. I liked it but the guy wanted $375 for it. Nothing doing. I gave it back and we tried to walk out. No big. But the guy stops us and begs to make a deal . We tell him that we would pay $100 and he acts insulted. We go to walk out and he offers $275, we say no and negotiate it until he says $175 and it's a deal. We never meant to haggle this and it worked out anyway. I'll post some pictures of the beautiful ring, when I get some. So with a new piece of Mexican jewelry, we make our way back to the group.

We know we are going to be split up into groups of 4 and on the walk to the jeeps we meet up with another couple. Turns out that they are from Indiana too! Ha! So we agree to pair up, and have our one and only celebrity sighting of the trip. Turns out that Morgan Freeman owns one of those little jewelry shops. Who knew?

We get our instructions. Someone is going to lead the group. If he goes fast, we go fast. If he goes slow, we go slow. If he runs over a Mexican, we don't run over the same Mexican. After this complicated lesson we are off! Jason drove us there in a Jeep that was possibly missing some gears and really obviously missing some maintenance. It was a pretty drive, other than the Mexican policeman that I saw holding a machine gun. eek. I'm not breaking the law, I swear.

We drove to a national park type place and first, we saw some alligators. They were big. We also saw some crabs in there and some neat rotted trees. There was a big tower to climb and we could see the alligator tracks in there.

Then we saw the ruins. They had told us not to expect much, but the story behind the tiny thing (a lot more was under the sand) was interesting. If hurricane force winds started to blow, the thing would whistle to warn the people! That was so cool! We then drove to our snorkel site. We parked the Jeeps and walked to a big beach with gorgeous water and soft sand. We all got our equipment on, and after not enough instruction, we went out into the very rough water.

It was hard to swim in all of that, but we struggled out to a coral reef. There were way too many people way to close together. For people who had never snorkeled before, it was extra difficult. We managed to see some cool things. I saw a tiny fish that was black with electric blue spots. The coral was also neat. There were huge purple fans that swayed with the aforementioned rough water. It really was grueling. It was hard to swim and confusing with so many people. I held a stranger's hand. I think it was a girl. We both did it, and then realized at the same time that it wasn't who we were reaching for. We did eventually make it back in, a lot of people had to be rescued by jet skis and stuff. I can't overstate how had it was to swim.

When we got in, we had a lunch that was pretty good. We drove back, this time the wife of the other couple driving. Turns out they like top gear too. Ha! We had a little time to look around some more, and we should have gone in to one shop that we didn't. They were selling luchador masks. Hee Hee!

We were walking back to the boat, and I wanted to see what was going to be on that big perch stick thing. There were 4 parrots. The guy let me hold one, like normal at first, but then he turned her on her back, and I held her like a baby! It was cool. We got Danica a tiny shirt from the Cozumel humane society and got back on the boat.

We were both toast. Suburned doesn't even begin to cover it. We had some dinner at the Japanese Steakhouse on the boat, called Teppenyaki (I really have no clue if that's spelled correctly). We had to eat there! Our first date was at a Japanese steakhouse, plus that's just really good food to eat. It wasn't as good as our favorite Kabuto, but it was good. They served warm edamame and we didn't realize for a while that they wanted you to shell the beans before eating them. Extra roughage for us, yay. Then we went to see a strange show called "Sea Legs" it was a showgirls/acrobat show and it was so hokey it was hilarious. We went up to spinnaker again for 70's night and then crashed. The next day was Grand Cayman!