Residence Inn Marriott Melbourne

From Bahamas - 2011

I slept poorly on that rock hard bed. It was awful. I woke up about every thirty minutes. I’d love to say that it was excitement, but it was misery.
We woke up sore and grumpy. I called the airport shuttle to inquire about the shuttle schedule to the port. I was told that they had one shuttle scheduled to go to the port and that it left around noon. We are supposed to be boarded by 1430hrs. That is not much time considering the distance from the airport to the cruise lines was about an hour.

We went and got breakfast. Coffee was needed by the husband. We where both a bit hungry and tired. It worked out for us. They had a real breakfast, much to my surprise. Often times, the breakfast offered by a hotel is some old bagels and dry pastries. They had eggs, sausage, potatoes, waffles, cereal, oatmeal, and juices. They also had coffee. At one point, I looked around and realized that I was the only adult not drinking coffee. I felt strange. It did not help that someone had switched the television to an evangelist Sunday morning service. I learned that God can read text messages and knows when you use his name in vain. I guess all of those comic strips of them using computers in heaven are true.

We started making a plan B. Plan B evolved as I did some reading and discovered that there was a car rental right by the pier. I asked my husband to see if we could move the drop off. He was tired and grumpy about our sudden lack of premade plans. When he called Hertz they said “Sure, and your rate is the same.” That means the 63 dollars we were paying to rent the car from the previous day covered us dropping off at the pier. They also had a shuttle to the cruise terminal.

This was becoming a better situation. Finding the actual addresses to GPS coordinate ourselves was a little bit harder. People have been cruising for longer then there has been an internet. Some of these established agencies are not online yet. This makes finding simple bits of information hard. Everyone wants to route us to the airport as their home base.

Yet, we found the address, packed up, and headed out.

At checkout the receptionist asks, “How was your stay?”

Tim looked at her and said, “It sucked. The bed was horrible. It was incredibly hard.”

“We hear that a lot,” she chirped. “People either love them or hate them.”

“I hated it,” he snarled. “It was awful.”

“Sorry about that! So, here is your bill,” she checked us out. “Oh yes! The night clerk said that you all were taking a limo from Black Diamond?”

“No. We thought the hotel had a shuttle. We rented a car.“ Tim glared and we left.

We will write a poor review for that hotel. TripAdvisor.Com and I will have a talk.

From

Residence Inn Marriott in Melbourne, Florida: Do not stay here unless you like hard beds and shady dealings

A quick bit about the upcoming cruise

Last month I looked at my husband and said, "We need to go on vacation."

"I agree," he told me. "Where? Vegas?"

"Maybe? I don't know. I want to do something. I need to get away from my job."

"Think they will let you go?"

"I've taken two days of leave this year and they where both in February. They better let me leave."

He looked skeptical. I couldn't blame him. Last year, when planning our Tokyo trip my boss had told me that two days in the middle of my trip might not be approved because of staffing issues. I said that I couldn't exactly fly from Tokyo back home for two days and fly back.

Conversations like that tire me out. I have co-workers that hand the boss a schedule of leave at the beginning of the year. It seems reasonable to give two or three months notice to take time off but these co-workers leave me feeling as if I do everything at the last minute.

I didn't care. I wanted to go on vacation and I was going to stomp my feet and have a tantrum if that is what it took.

Vacations where never part of my childhood. I had planned to make them part of my adulthood. Life had a habit of inserting itself into that equation and destroying my plans. This year, I wanted to go somewhere and do something new.

Our first thought wasn't new. It was to take a trip to Vegas as my husband had suggested. We really enjoyed Vegas when we went there to get married in 2007. What we were looking for was a stop gap before we went to England. My husband travels extensively for work and I have decide to start tagging along to expand my own horizons. Originally, we were going to go to England in October. Now, we were perhaps not going anywhere until the spring and I needed and wanted a break. This led to a frantic discussion and a random search on Expedia.com.

The thought was that we could do a cheap trip to Vegas for a few days. We had been to Vegas four years before to get married. We had enjoyed it and I wanted to stay atthe Venetian this time.

However, I saw an advert for cruises and I decided to see how much a cruise to Carrabian would be.

79 dollars a night!

What?

I did some more searching and sure enough, a full cruise could be as low as 70 odd dollars a night for the interior state rooms. Rooms and prices went up as the room quality went up. However, the prices were reasonable.

After a few hours of frantic searching we decided to book a cruise on Carnival to the Bahamas on the Sensation for 4 nights. And why the hell not, we went with the Grand Suite and an extended balcony while we where at it.

The frantic searching also included some visits to Cruise Critic for reviews of the cruise line, the boat, the rooms, and everything else.

It feels like a good decision.

An Occasional Traveler

I never had a goal of traveling. It started when I was a kid and my mother would take me with her to her work conferences. I went to several parts of the US when I was in elementary school and middle school. In high school I started showing dogs and I got to travel all over the country to go to dog shows.

By the time I was in collage, I had a taste for it. I got to travel more to visit with friends and go places as a group. My school was also 1,400 miles from my house and I made that drive quite often.

I still did not have any established goals. I got to visit with friends off and on over the years but the concept that I would ever be financially secure enough to travel did not come until my late twenties.

My husband took a job that required about 25% travel. I found myself envious of him and his trips all over the planet. I wanted to see and experience these things as well. That is when the luck kicked in. I got to travel with him. It took me a bit to try it but after my first attempt, I'm trying to add a few more in.

I take photographs and I try to experience it to the fullest. I am a cautious eater at home but when I travel I try everything. I try to overcome my natural shyness and step out to experience what there is to experience. I'm trying to bring that to my daily life but its not as easy.