Day Two
Day Two – Sunday May 24th - Key West
We actually wake up at 7:30, before the wake up call, and head up to the Lido Deck (this is the deck containing the pools, hot tubs, and the buffet). We head to the buffet for some breakfast, and I get what would become my standard for the week, and omelet with mushrooms and cheese, 6 sausage links, 4 hash browns, and 2 glasses of orange juice. For a buffet, the food was very good.
Around 8:30 we head back to our rooms to prepare for our voyage into Key West. As I noted previously, we are meeting a friend of ours who just moved down into the area, so we separated from the group and leave the ship right at 9:00.
This was my first time in Key West, and I really liked it. It reminded me of a miniature New Orleans, with all kinds of bars and shops on Duvall Street. The wife and I wondered around on Duvall Street for a while, and then headed to the Hogs Breath Saloon where we were to meet our friend at 11:30. We get there a few minutes early and head straight to the bar and decide to sample some Hogs Breath Beer. Mrs. Diesel thought it was good, but I have certainly had better. She decided to keep drinking the Hogs Breath, but I switched over to Corona.
Our friend was running late, and met us there around 12:00. We ate lunch at the Hogs Breath, and I got the shrimp and chips. It was very good. Our friend and my wife are both in the design business, so he started telling her about this art gallery down the street that he wanted her to see. So we start to stroll down Duvall Street. At this point I have about 6 beers in me, and almost have a nice buzz going, so I really just want to go to another bar and drink some more, but out friend keeps insisting that we see this art gallery, so we keep walking.
Along the way, my wife and our friend proceed to make fun of me for about a solid 5 minutes because I crossed the street for a block and then crossed back over just so I wouldn’t have to walk past the person standing on the street corner with a large snake wrapped around them. I don’t know what it is about snakes, but if you gave me the choice of having a ferocious lion running full speed towards me at 50 feet away and a little baby snake slithering in between my legs, I would choose the lion in a heartbeat.
Anyway, we go to this art gallery, and it sucks. I am getting really bored, so I decide to call KK and find out where they are at. He says that him, Big E, Big E’s wife, and Whiplash are all in some store right across from a bar called Irish Kevin’s. Lucky for me, we were standing outside Irish Kevin’s so we said goodbye to our friend and walked across the street to meet up with them.
As the girls continue to do some shopping, the guys decide to head over to the Bare Bottom Bar. We sit in the bar for about an hour, drinking some beers, when the girls finally come back to get us. They want to start heading back to the ship, as we set sail again at 4:30. As we are walking to the door, Big E and I overhear someone talking about some girl dancing upstairs with big fake boobs. Almost instantaneously, we both realize that there is a strip club upstairs, which is why the place is called the Bare Bottoms Bar. Anyway, we quickly make up some excuse to the girls telling them we will meet them down the street in a few minutes, and jet up the stairs as soon as they are out of sight. (Note: my wife could give two sh*ts if I went to a strip club, but Big E’s wife is highly against it, so we had to be secretive.) Turns out we weren’t missing much, as the talent on a Sunday afternoon must not be the best.
We head back to the boat, with me again crossing the street to avoid walking past the snake. We get to the boat and clean ourselves up for dinner. We get to dinner, and I decide to start a new trend and order two main courses, as I couldn’t decide between the black tiger shrimp and the smoked salmon. This trend would continue for the rest of the trip. The dinner was excellent, and everything was going great, until the cruise director appears in the center of the dining room with a microphone. He then explains to everyone that we are going to divide the ship up into three teams, and each team will receive points for participating in the events that are held on the ship throughout the week. At the end of the week, they will announce which team has the most points, and they will be able to celebrate their no prize victory. The ship is divided into the red team, blue team, and white team. The entire rest of the week, they would update everyone on the total points scored by each team, and everyone seemed to take this so seriously. I just couldn’t understand why anyone would care about this when there are no prizes involved.
After dinner we head to the show, where a performer named Marcus Anthony was going to be singing hits from Motown. I am a big R&B fan, so I thought that the show was excellent. The show ended around 10:00, so we decided to head up to the casino and play some –EV table games until around 11:30, when we would return to the theatre to get good seats for the adult comedy show beginning at 12:00. In an uneventful hour and a half, I dropped $100 on the blackjack table. The comedian was good, and we head back up to the disco, which is called White Heat, which we referred to as “Dub H”. Whiplash is scoring us all numerous free drinks by flirting with the wait staff, which is fine with me. We call it a night around 2:00, as we figure the day at sea tomorrow will be cause for an all day drink fest, and we should probably get some rest.
My two day totals are (these are accurate totals based on the bill I received on my credit card):
Gambling -$100
Drinking 4 glasses of wine at dinner
4 rum punches
28 (7 buckets) Miller Lites
An update on the day at sea, including the major injury sustained by Mrs. Diesel, the waiter that brought Whiplash free drinks the entire rest of the trip, and how the movie Napoleon Dynamite played a major role in the trip, to come tomorrow.
Rick Diesel
|