DH and I planned a quickie cruise for September 11. It was my 13th, DH's 12th. We drove down to Galveston on Thursday, 9/11, for a (hum Gilligan's Island theme here: a 3-hour tour, a 3-hour tour,etc,) 4 day cruise to Cozumel, returning to Galveston early Monday morning. Just sort of a long weekend cruise. We left San Antonio early in the morning. We took I-10 to Houston, then Beltway 8 south to I-45. Beltway 8 let us go free, so we saved our $20 roll of quarters for the trip home. (tucked very carefully in a nook in the console) We'd watched the weather channel and saw that Ike was headed for South Texas, probably around Port O'Connor or Corpus Christi, so when we arrived in Galveston we put $65.00 worth of gasoline in the truck in case there was any shortage when we returned on Monday. We parked at Lighthouse Parking, a new one for us, but I'd read online that it had the highest elevation of any of the lots and that they were very prompt about taking you to and from the ship. We were the first two people on the ship! While we were waiting Carnival gave us a printed sheet that said we'd be going to Vera Cruz instead of Cozumel because of Ike. We'd actually been to Vera Cruz on a hurricane-altered cruise either 2 or 3 years ago, and we liked it. We'd been looking forward to beach time in Cozumel, but we knew we couldn't sail straight across that hurricane, so 'no problem, mon'. They loaded that ship up in a hurry, and we actually sailed ahead of the scheduled 4 pm departure. The first night out was pretty rough, we were really moving fast to get out of the way of Ike, so it was a little rocky. We liked our tablemates, especially the two brothers from Dallas (20's ish) who ate their way through the entire menu. Our waiter, Mario, couldn't ever get an entire order right, but he was good-natured enough.

When my sister and I cruised on the same ship in April,("sistercruise" by Mossboss) I'd picked out a slot machine before they opened the casino and when I got to it it was already occupied and the woman had hit a big win! So I would not be out raced to that slot this time, and sure enough I put in a ten-spot and walked away with $106. Friday was a full day at sea. Barry and I won both trivia games that we played, sampled the drink of the day several times and enjoyed the casino. That's the day I was hot at the Blackjack table. We skipped the show so that we'd be rested for our day in Vera Cruz. We got up Saturday morning and turned on CNN. Oops! We couldn't believe it. That sucker went straight in to Galveston. Nobody on the ship could believe it. Most of the cruisers on the ships out of Galveston are Texans, most of us drive to the terminal and park there, and we were all concerned about what they were going to do with us. But we all still had hopes that it wasn't too bad. They still didn't have much to show us at that point other than people standing outside in Houston with traffic lights laying in the street.

Barry and I planned to get off the ship and find a taxi to take a private tour of historical buildings in Vera Cruz then liquor shopping and souvenir shopping. We went to the taxi line, and I looked over and saw this guy I thought I recognized, so I yelled 'Jesus' and he turned and looked at me. Believe it or not, we'd gotten the same taxi driver we had the last time we were there. He doesn't speak a word of English, but our Spanish is good enough to get around to the edificios historicas and the tienda de liquores and el mercado. He took us to all the colonial buildings and a good liquor store and market. Back to the ship and a peek at CNN. By now we know that Galveston is not in good shape, but there still aren't any pictures, and nobody has talked to anybody who can tell them anything at all. We're all pretty suspicious that we're not going back to Galveston. I'm still having a good time in the casino. We have another full day at sea, and we're still collecting those trivia trophies! I think this was Blue Margarita day at the bar and it was my favorite. Next to Harvey Wallbanger day. They moved the debarkation talk from 10 am to 5 pm hoping to have some news for us by then. I think we changed sailing direction about noon. The debarkation talk was very sketchy. The Port of Galveston was closed and they were taking us to New Orleans and we'd arrive Tuesday afternoon. The show that night was Xtreme Country and it was very good, but I've never seen a showroom that empty on a cruise ship. (Not at prime time, anyway.) Read more