I’m back home from our 10-day cruise aboard the Carnival Splendor! I wrote these posts along the way, usually at night before going to bed, so they’re written as though I’m still on the ship. I’m just a little behind on actually posting them, since we had limited internet while we were away. If you missed them, you can catch up on Day 1 and Day 2.
This morning I woke up with a monster sugar hangover: headache, puffy eyes, the works. My immune system gets angry at me when I’ve eaten too much sugar, so normally I try to keep my intake low (a bit hard when you have a binge eating disorder combined with the addictive nature of sugar). But on this cruise, I’ve kinda thrown caution to the wind because of my fear of missing out (FOMO), and I’m eating so much more than I’m used to.
Well, today my body got pissy about it.
While I was waking up and trying (unsuccessfully) to hide my puffy eyes with makeup, the boys went up to the walking track to take a look at the ocean. Once they came back, I convinced them to go to the sit-down breakfast at the restaurant, instead of the buffet.
The restaurant was so much better!
You have to order from a menu, but there are no limits on how much you can ask for. In saying that, I get that ordering from someone can be uncomfortable at times, so I can see the appeal of the buffet when you want to just go for broke.
I ordered eggs benedict (with ham, not salmon, whoop!), L got waffles, and D ordered scrambled eggs with bacon and toast. I was happy; the boys probably not so much.
After breakfast, we returned to the cabin so L could start his travel journal. For his birthday, we had bought him a digital underwater camera and a kid’s travel journal. As he was missing school to go on the trip, we had told the teacher that he would have “homework”, aka his journal. Truth be told, I don’t think she would have minded if he did nothing at all, but she loved our idea! Each day he can do a drawing (or, in our case, little polaroids we printed out from a portable printer), plus fill in where he went, who he was with, things he saw/heard/smelled, etc. It’s very cool.
After that, L wanted to head up to the kids club again. Once we dropped him off, D and I set off to play trivia. I love trivia, so the fact that there’s so much of it on board made my little heart happy.
Then it was time for another gym session – I wanted to take advantage of the non-parenting time as much as I could. I decided on a bike sesh, and found one facing towards the front of the boat. It was very cool looking out over the horizon (and weird seeing no land anywhere). I’m so spoiled for my bike at home, though, because on the boat there was nothing to watch on the screen, and no internet on my phone, so I got bored quickly. Next time I might take my Kindle with me.
After the gym, it was time to hunt down the convenience store.
If you’ve been following my blog, you might know that I’m dealing with perimenopause at the moment. My most recent issue being frequent periods… sigh. My last period had finished only a few days before the trip, so I thought I was in the clear. On a whim, I’d thrown some pads in, just in case. Well, lucky I did, because that morning I had an unexpected period, less than a week after the last one!
At this point I’m so frustrated with my body that agreeing to a hysterectomy is looking very tempting.
Anyway, I had the pads, but I still wanted to be able to swim if I could. I located the shop onboard, and was relieved to see they had a supply of tampons. The price wasn’t too obnoxious, $7.50, but still considerably more than on land.
We then caught up with the family for lunch at the restaurant, except for L. We knew he wouldn’t be interested in the menu, so figured we’d get him something separately after. This time I ordered:
- Entree: spring rolls
- Main: beef and rice (edit note: kicking myself for not screenshotting the menu)
- Dessert: A mango and rice ball thing that was incredible.
The food was really good, and I left with a happy belly.
After we got L from the kids club, he ate a burger for lunch from the Lido deck (very happy customer), then we all went back to the cabin. I took the opportunity to do some more washing. With three of us, I can really only wash about a day’s worth of clothes at a time, so I’ve decided I want to stay on top of it as much as I can. It takes all day to dry, but it’s super fast to wash, so it’s easy to fit in when having a bit of rest time in the room. After that, we chilled for a bit reading our books, or in D’s case, hanging out on the balcony.
In the afternoon, the “Fun Squad” entertainment team were running “backyard games” on the Lido deck, so we headed up to take a look. L and I ended up playing a game where they have a standing frame, and you each get two sets of balls joined by a rope. The goal is to throw them so the rope wraps around one of the bars on the frame. It was a lot of fun! When we started, no one else was playing, but after a few minutes, a lineup had formed behind us, so we passed it over to the next family to play.
L refilled his energy bar with a soft serve ice cream before he and D played several games of ping pong (table tennis). Meanwhile, I heard the Australian anthem play (otherwise known as the Nutbush), and joined in the line dancing from the balcony above the Lido deck. There was a lot of eye-rolling from D about my enthusiasm 😉
Finally it was time to dress for dinner. The theme tonight in the restaurant was Island Night, and although every night the dress code is optional, D had (at my request) bought us all matching flamingo shirts to wear.
At the restaurant we joined in with the dancing by the waiters (and spinning our napkins in the air), before enjoying yet another delicious three-course meal.
This time, I ordered:
- Entree: spring rolls (I’m only realising now as I’m writing this that I had spring rolls twice today, oops)
- Main: chicken with green beans and rice (the green beans were so yummy, and I was craving veggies so this was perfect)
- Dessert: island rum cake with toasted pecans (edit note: I originally wrote this as just “something yum”, so I was obviously tired! Thanks to my sister-in-law for having a screenshot of the menu that night).
After dinner, we made our way to the theatre to watch “Deal or No Deal”. It was absolutely hilarious, and you could play along in the audience from your phone too. We tried once but didn’t win anything. Someone in the audience won about 3k though – how good!
After that, we went back to the cabin, and now we’re finally getting ready for bed. L is reading his book, I’m writing my blog post, and D is in the shower.
In other news, the map is showing us nearing the tip of New Zealand, woohoo!!
Admittedly, I did have a moment today when I thought, “my god, 10 days on a boat is a long time.” But having so much to do on board is definitely helping, so I wouldn’t say I have cabin fever. I also love that we’re getting a mix of time with L, the wider family, plus time to ourselves. Setting my expectations that the boat was our holiday destination has really helped, I think. It’s been a great combination of everything.
All that said, I’m really enjoying our holiday so far, and we’re only three days in! And I think I can officially say I’ve adjusted. I’m still wearing my travel bands, but I’ve not had any seasickness tablets in over 24 hours.
Now, it’s stupidly late, so time to sign off and close my eyes.
