Guys, I Went On A Cruise

So, I went on a cruise. It was my first ever, and I loved it.

Sunrise on the Gulf of Mexico. That’s like a real shot I took with my dumb phone and it looked amazing, because this whole place is beautiful.

I feel conflicted telling people just how great the cruise was, because while I was on the cruise I would check the news and see the stock market plummeting and politics being awful, and I was just like "Hey! Another virgin Mojito, please!"

Anyway, the cruise was with my brother, Dan Wells. Dan is a writer, like me (he actually got me into way back 25 years ago) but he's also a big time gamer (I am not). So he and a couple other people organized a gaming cruise, where you go on a cruise and do all the cruise stuff, but while you're not eating you're in the lower decks' conference room playing RPGs.

Now, I started playing RPGs in the seventh grade, starting with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle roleplaying game, but I didn't stick with it. I love the world building and character building of a roleplaying game, but I don't like the actual playing of it. It's like extroversion for nerds, and I am firmly an introverted nerd. So, on the cruise, I didn't partake of any of the RPGs.

I was on the cruise, I should note, because Dan's wife is currently going back to school to get a second degree and she couldn't go--so he brought me along as his Plus One. Which is great, because I get along with my brother very well and, well, free cruise.

Costa Maya. We didn’t get off the ship here. But it’s very very pretty.

So let me tell you some things about the cruise, in no particular order:

There is nothing open on a cruise ship at 4:00am. You'd think there would be, and even the travel agents who had arranged the cruise and who each have been on more than 200 cruises thought there would be. But there isn't. This is an issue for me because I wake up at 4:00am, and it would have been nice to have someplace to go. (At home, my wife has become immune to the desk lamp and my alarm and sleeps soundly till it's time for her to wake, but my brother is a late sleeper, and turning on the light would not work.) So, every morning I went to the place that opened the earliest--the bakery--and sat there and wrote on my laptop or notebook until they opened, and then I would gorge myself on pastries until Dan would get up around eight. The fruit tart was my favorite.

Speaking of writing, I wrote. That was the main thing that I did on the cruise. I brought along my notebook (for brainstorming) and my laptop (for drafting) and got so much brainstorming done during the first five days that on the sixth I actually cracked the laptop and wrote a few pages. Unfortunately, it was enough to realize I hadn't done enough brainstorming. (I'm working on a new project. My primary book, Tartarus Deep, has been through one round of revisions with my agent and I'm waiting to hear back. This book is another 200+ years in the future YA sci-fi, though it's set in a different universe from the other. I don't have a solid pitch for it yet, except to say that--you know Neal Shusterman's Thunderhead? Imagine that, but the Thunderhead is evil. It's kinda like that.)

I know that this is not a surprise to anyone who has been on a cruise before, but oh my gosh THE FOOD. Some was admittedly better than others. I could routinely get a solid B or B+ meal in the buffet (though there were definitely some misses). The dining room at night was always excellent--a good A- or A, depending on the night. And then the travel agents took Dan and I out to one of the fancy restaurants that you have to pay for, and it was an absolutely A++. You can see in this picture the lamb chops that I got there, accompanied by some lovely risotto.

Lamb chops and risotto at the fancy Italian place.

And they just bring you as much as you want of whatever!?!? I'd been putting off getting a steak every night because I was getting other versions of beef (like prime rib one night) but on the last night I had steak--I like it rare--and it was SO GOOD that Dan and I looked at each other (he'd had chicken parmesan) and we told the waiter we'd both like another steak. And my second was every bit as excellent as the first, and Dan's was overcooked, but still okay.

I didn't like going outside up on the deck, mainly because I sunburn easily and also that's where the kids are, but I did spend quite a bit of time on our balcony, writing with my feet up. I really enjoyed just watching the water. (Also, sidenote about the balcony, you could see so many stars at night when the ship wasn't in port. That makes total sense, I guess, but I hadn't thought about the lack of light pollution that you have in the Gulf of Mexico.

That time I went up on deck and got a milkshake. Yes, this is how I look.

Speaking of: we went to Mexico, and we didn't really do much. The first stop was Costa Maya, which isn't (according to my brother, who used to live in Mexico and is fluent) not REAL Mexico. Apparently it's just a resort town that is owned in large part by the cruise lines. So we didn't even get off the ship. But the next day we went to Cozumel, not because we wanted to do a lot of excursions--we didn't do any--but because Dan wanted some really good authentic Mexican food. So he used his language prowess to talk to the taxi driver and have him take us somewhere that tourists don't normally go. (We found that Dan's language prowess got us through a lot of tourist traps. People either assumed he was native or, at the very least, assumed he was savvy. We never had to haggle with street vendors when we were buying stuff, because they never tried to artificially raise the price. So that was handy.) (As for the Mexican food: it was good, but not stellar--but the flan was incredible.)

At the restaurant in Cozumel.

I also took along a small kit of painting supplies and about 13 miniatures to paint while I wasn't writing, and I got through seven of them. It was fun, though I always seem to forget SOMETHING when I try that, and this time I did indeed forget some stuff. But it was a fun way to pass the time.

I wrote all over the ship, in every bar, and then the second to last day the travel agents introduced me to the Crown Lounge (which you can see in this photo). Not only was it quiet, while all the bars were loud, but they also had by far the most comfortable chairs on the ship. So I wrote there for the rest of the trip.

The Crown Lounge, where I definitely did some really poor drafting.

All-in-all it was a really wonderful vacation, though I missed my wife terribly. But, next year my parents have a big anniversary coming up (their 50th wedding anniversary?) and we're all going on an Alaskan cruise. (Well, we're not taking the kids. Let's be serious.)