Happiness Comes in Waves

Three things you need to know about me when I travel:
1. I love the adventure of discovering a new place and the culture it exudes.
2. I am a lover of history--if we want to be remembered by what we do, we must first understand what was done by those who came before.
3. One of my biggest fears is to die in the bottomless abyss that is the ocean.....

     That being said, I embarked on my latest adventure two Sundays ago (seriously, it's already been that long??) as I set sail--literally--on my first cruise ever.  My grandparents celebrated 60 years of wedded bliss in June and wanted to give it a warm welcome by taking my immediate family with them on a cruise to the Western Caribbean.  Like I stated, I have never been on a cruise, nor have I been to the Western Caribbean, but both sounded like no stress and a tan, so I was in from the get go!  We took the Liberty of the Seas via Royal Caribbean to visit Roatán, Honduras and Costa Maya and Cozumel, Mexico.  As soon as I learned where we were going, I could already hear my wallet groaning and my heart growing more excited about the items on my bucket list I would get to check off (more about that later).  So we booked our excursions, packed WAY too many of our belongings and were off to hit the high seas!
My plan was to fly into the Houston-HOBBY airport from Nashville early on Saturday morning.  While the Nashville International Airport is always fantastic, other places are not always so.  First my flight was delayed by an hour coming in from La Guardia (it's always New York, isn't it?) and then I had a layover in Austin for two hours.  Trust me, this was not by choice, but there were literally no other direct flights out that day.  What's ironic about the layover is that the flight from Austin to Houston is actually only about 35 minutes or so--juxtaposed with that two hour wait and you have a prime opportunity to "Keep Austin Weird."

     That being said, Austin was a great place to stretch your legs as they had "hip" standing tables for dining and waiting so if you didn't want to sit down, by golly, you didn't have to! As my mother said, "How very Austin of them."  The layover was also a great time to get some stressful business done--stressful?? I thought this was a vacation!--Did I mention I was trying to buy a house at the same time? Ha, yeah.  Story of my life=I stress about stress before there is even stress to stress about.  I mean, who in the world would try to buy a house the day before they leave on a boat that will strand them without contact to the outside world for seven straight days?? This girl, right here!

All that aside, I finally made it to Houston, where my parents and my grandparents picked me up and took us the last 30 minutes or so to Galveston where our lovely ship was docked and waiting for us to board the next morning.  In the meantime, we decided to enjoy the only food you should be eating on the Gulf of Mexico--seafood!

     By the time we were ready to board the ship, in all her majesty, that next morning, I was already feeling a bit nervous.  Do you recall the third thing I mentioned at the beginning of this post that you needed to know?  Yeah, technology may have come a long way and blah, blah, blah, but they said the same darn thing about the Titanic and let's just say I am more of a Rose than a Jack.  Anniversary--schmaniversary--if this ship went down it was everyone for themselves.  My family thought I was being funny--glad they never had the chance to find out I was not :)

However, what I did realize as we quite safely boarded, got settled into our staterooms with a deck view on the port side in the forward section of the ship (bonus points for those who can tell me what those terms mean), and calmly watched dolphins entertain us from the port waters below, was that when we let it, happiness comes in waves.  It's always ready to lift us up and carry us to a new destination--much like what I was anticipating from this vacation.  And boy, it did not disappoint.