01 – Houston

Houston | At Sea | Cozumel | Roatan | Belize | Cancun | At Sea || Ship Details

Day 1: Houston, Texas
	This is the east side of Houston, near the port. Lovely. But not as bad as River Rouge, Michigan. This scene served as a poetic contrast to our vacation; a sendoff from the harsh industrious norm to a relaxing respite.Our ship was the Norwegian Sea. It’s a 40,000 ton ship. 1300 passengers, 600 staff, 5 restaurants, 1/4-mile jogging track. They say it’s a small cruise ship. Our original room (called a “stateroom”) was supposed to be an inside room on the lower deck, but our travel agent upgraded us to an upper outside room. That would have normally cost us several hundred dollars more. Good view. We were in room 6007 on Deck 6, the same level that has the jogging track around the outside perimeter of the ship. The ship has 2 pools and 2 hot tubs. 4 formal restaurants and one casual restaurant. They also have grill out on the pool deck (Deck 9). There are 2 lounges with stages, capable of seating hundreds of people, and several smaller lounges.


Day 2: At Sea
	Only staff was allowed on the bow. I’m betting they had too many “I’m the king of the Worlaaaaaah…!” splash episodes.
	Each day, we’d walk a couple of miles around on their jogging track. The ocean breeze was quite refreshing. We expected to see some dolphins or other fish, but the only animals we saw was one bird and several flying fish that would jump out of the water and fly for a 100 feet or so before going back into the water. We didn’t think they were flying fish because they flew so far. But once they hit the water, they never came back up. Pretty weird. This is the port side (“driver’s side” on a car). Our “stateroom” was the 6th window, underneath the lifeboat. The white canisters on the right are inflatable life boats.
	The larger lifeboats can hold 40 people. All the lifeboats have food and water for 3 days.