CLAMP Campus Adventures

And in the end…

Thursday

Most cruise lines have a structured disembarking method where they call your deck and then you can leave. Carnival has open disembarking which means, as soon as you’re cleared for port, you can leave. This means, people who are in a hurry all try to leave at once. We sat on deck and waited them out for about an hour before heading off. I think this worked to our advantage.

Amber, Carl’s parents & myself waiting to disembark

Carl shows us how to Mime

We headed back to the Radisson to get the cars, packed them up, and headed off on the road. We stopped briefly at the Wal-mart we saw so I could get bandaides for my injured toes and we could grab some snack food for the long drive home. We then headed north.

There was snow falling up north, so we decided to make an early night of it at 8 pm. We ended up staying in Fayetteville, NC at a Best Western. It was a pretty nice hotel. Queen sized beds.

Friday

We heard the roads were clear on The Weather Channel so we headed out after breakfast. We drove through to midnight, arriving back into Boston. This is when we hit our first snag (although there was some traffic outside Washington, DC). I-90 was closed to the Ted Williams and we had to traverse Boston city streets in order to get to the Ted Williams and home. We made it, very tired and wanting nothing more than to sleep which we did.

Summary

A more complete photolog is available with more pictures. We had a great time, but I don’t think I’d do a Carnival cruise again without having children. The cruise is very family friendly and there were a lot of kids on board. It’s not exactly how I like to spend my vacation, although I see the appeal to families. Our Royal Caribbean cruise was much better in the lack of loud children department. The problem with having children on board and the ship accommodating them to the level Carnival does, is you get parents who think the cruise staff’s only duty is to babysit their kids. They do have activities and whatnot scheduled for the kids, but that’s not what the staff is meant to do. We had some lovely children who thought it was a great idea to blow an air horn in the corridors outside our stateroom at 1 am. We were not amused.

We love cruising and think it’s a great, economical vacation. You end up spending less per night on rooms, getting full meals included, than you would doing other vacations and paying for hotel and food as you go. I just don’t think I’ll do Carnival again anytime soon.