Overall, we had a great trip on the AOS, with a couple of snafus (none of which were RCCL's fault). First a little background. We are the Schmoopies (okay, we're really Gary and Jane, but for those of you playing along at home, we're also huge Seinfeld fans. Hence the Schmoopies. For those of you who aren't Seinfeld fans...if such a person exists...ask a Seinfeld fan where "Schmoopie" comes from. No, get your mind out of the gutter...it's not dirty. But I digress...). We're also huge Green Bay Packer fans (aka Cheeseheads...more on that later). You should also know that this was Jane's very first cruise, while Gary is the cruising veteran in the family, with three cruises under his belt. Gary is also the trip planner in the family and he booked this cruise way back in May. Since he booked the cruise, he then spent every single day (and I mean EVERY single day) on Cruise Critic planning the finer points of the trip. If you don't believe that, ask Jane, who adopted the phrase "Are you still on that damn cruise site?" as her mantra for the next nine months. Okay, on to the report:

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26th

Flew from Chicago to SJU. Stayed at the Embassy Suites in Isla Verde. Chose that hotel because of the nightly Happy Hour and great breakfast. The room/suite was just okay, but the rest of the hotel was nice. Happy Hour made us, well...happy. We had to stand in line for drink refills, but that was okay until Gary started choking/coughing from a peanut (or something) stuck in his throat while standing in line for our third (or was it our fourth) refill. A little old Puerto Rican woman started hitting Gary on the back to try to dislodge the peanut (or something)...or maybe she did it because that was her way of hitting on him (literally). Of course, she was about 75 years old, so it's unlikely she was actually "hitting" on him...she was just probably hitting on him. The coughing jag finally subsided after what seemed like 20 minutes (it was probably only about a minute or two, but Gary tends to exaggerate...just one of his charms). Since we had pretty much filled up on drinks, we weren't tremendously hungry, so we ordered a small (actually tiny) pizza from the food place inside the hotel. It looked and tasted like dough with tomato sauce on it, nothing more. But since we weren't starving, it did the job. The next morning, the breakfast was better than your average hotel continental breakfast. All in all, the Embassy Suites was fine for a pre-cruise stay, close to the Pueblo market and a Walgreens (as well as just about every fast food joint you can name). Read more