February 19, 2008: The Chieftains Concert at Bass Hall
	January 31 - February 12, 2008: A Trip to Fort Lauderdale
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Sunday, February 3: Our Cruise Begins

In the middle of our two-week stay in Florida, Fred and I, Greg and Grant and Virl and Joe took a cruise on the Royal Caribbean 'Jewel of the Seas' to Key West, Mexico and Belize. This was the first cruise for Fred and only the second for me, and we picked it as being pretty representative of what cruising is like. We figured that if we liked it, then we might do one every once in a while; it was kind of a training cruise.

One of the reasons that I wanted Fred to leave the greenhouses was so that we could do some things that didn't fit themselves into neat weeks of vacation. I wanted us to be able to spend a few days in San Antonio, or take a mid-week trip to Florida, or take a cruise when we wanted or when the deals were best. Now that our time is our own, we can do that.

One of the first new things I wanted us to try was taking a cruise. Grant Wagner and I took one in 1991; that was the only one that he or I were ever on. After seventeen years, I wasn't at all sure if even I would like it anymore, and much less sure whether Fred would like it at all. So Greg helped us find a six-day cruise to the Western Caribbean- a cruise that would be representative of those we might take in the future. Not only did he help us find and book the cruise, but he decided that he and Grant would go as well. And, shortly after that, two of his old friends from New York City decided to join us as well.

This cruise will begin in Fort Lauderdale, where we will board the ship on Sunday afternoon, February 3rd. The ship will leave Everglades Inlet about five-thirty in the afternoon, cruise all night, and dock in Key West, Florida, on Monday morning. In Key West, we will leave the ship for our first shore excursion- a kayaking trip on the east side of Key West.

The ship will leave Key West on Monday afternoon, again cruise all night, and dock in Cozumel, Mexico, on Tuesday morning. In Cozumel, we will take the second of our shore excursions- a trip on a "semi-submarine," which is a boat converted so that below decks is one long room with viewing glass along the entire hull, allowing two rows of people to look out under the water to the reefs below.

The ship will leave Cozumel on Tuesday about six in the evening, once again cruise all night, and anchor in the harbor at Belize City, Belize on Wednesday morning. There, tenders will ferry passengers to the Belize docks for the various activities or excursions that they may have booked. We have chosen and excursion that will take us sixty miles inland from Belize City to the Jaguar Paw Resort, where we will try our hand at ziplining through the forest and also take a raft tubing trip through some caves along a local river.

Then the ship will leave Belize City on Wednesday evening, sail through the night, and anchor in the harbor at Playa del Carmen, Mexico on Thursday morning. Here, we will be tendered to the dock to embark on our fourth and last shore excursion- a visit to the Mayan Ruins at Chichen Itza about one hundred and twenty-five miles inland from the coast. The excursion will take all day, and we'll return to the ship in time for its sailing at six in the evening.

The ship will then cruise all Thursday night, all day Friday and then all through Friday night, finally docking back in Fort Lauderdale at about six in the morning on Saturday, February 9th.

I have set up a separate series of photo album pages for the seven days of our cruise. As I have done for some of our other trips that spanned more than a few days and where we did and saw lots of different things, I have created an index page for the cruise, and if you have seen one of these indexes before, you can jump directly to this one by simply clicking HERE.

Using the Master Index

We took hundreds of pictures and movies while on our cruise, so I have had to find a good way to organize them so that they are not simply overwhelming.

First and foremost, I wanted to group together all the pictures for the various excursions or specific activities that we did while on the cruise, and this I have done. Second, I have grouped together all the activity sections for a specific day of the cruise. Finally, there were some categories of pictures that all had the same theme but which were not all taken at the same time or on the same day. I thought that fragmenting these groupings simply to keep to a daily organization would not be helpful, and so I have brought these pictures together into their own groups. (There were four of these categories- exterior ship pictures, interior ship pictures, pictures of our stateroom and pictures of all the artwork that was displayed throughout the ship.

The Master Index will allow you to either go to the first album page and proceed page by page from there, or to jump to a specific cruise page if there is something particular that you want to see (or you want to pick up where you left off). Each page, of course, will have links at the top and bottom to allow you to go back and forth through the other pages for the trip. When you want to go on from this cruise to other pages in this photo album, please use the link at the top or bottom of each page that will bring you back to this index page. There will be a link at the top of the index below that will take you to the top of the page where you will find the normal links to the rest of the photo album.