Febuary 16th. we got on the plane and headed to Miami with a stop over in Chicago, nothing interesting just a plane ride.

We got to Miami at 11PM, sat in the airport for over an hour waiting for the shuttle from our hotel, and then he expected a tip!

Let me tell you if we wern't so tired the four of us would of went looking for another hotel, it was awful, dirty and Dan found blood on the comforter.

The next day we went to the port of Miami, the ships are huge.

At 4PM we started our journey, we sat on the pool deck drinking something called Fun Ships (concoction of different liquors and rum), and watched as Miami slipped away.

We had all the next day to checkout the ship, 7 resturants, 3 fine dining resturants, coffee shop, casino, spa, 3 pools, 4 night clubs, 2 huge buffets, cigar smoking bar, piano lounge, shops up the wazzzoooo, and one huge room where all the shows where and bingo was held. Let me tell you a bit about the bingo. They were giving $1000 prizes away all week, then on friday they gave cruises away, I didn't win anything ;(

Did I mention that there was a huge water slide on the middle of the ship??

Getting back to the cruise, we docked in San Juan the next evening and went exploring. The cruise line wanted us to take their tour, but we found one of our own half the price and I'm sure alot more fun. The tour guide was a local so he showed us his city (was a blast) , he parked on sidewalks and stopped the traffic so the 20 of us could cross the street. We went to the main government buildings and got to see the Constitution of Puerto Rico, beautiful tiling and stone work. We then went to the old fort whose walls circled San Juan completely, it was huge with 18 ft. thick walls.

He then took us to the downtown area to shop, and told us where to get the best deals

We got back to the ship just in time to have supper in our fine dining resturant, lobster and steak, with cherries jubbille for desert.

We left San Juan at midnight, we watch a movie on the pool deck's 20x15ft. screen while having a beer and snacks.

St.Thomas was our next port of call, and we just walked around, took pictures, sampled the local flavor and their drinks. We bought hats, and Kath got a diamond and saphire (sp?) ring. Dan (my son) bought a $500 Seiko watch from Diamonds International for $190...no tax. We walked for hours, thank god for my treadmill

St.Martin was our next port, and we shopped till we dropped, beautiful place, bought a whole bunch of Tshirts, hats, for everyone at home. Palm trees were everywhere, and there was the heat 80 degrees

One thing about Carnival , they made sure we didn't get ripped off by having a list of places we could shop without fear of being ripped off, and they guaranteed it in writing.

Well we had two days at sea coming back so we could relax and recouperate before we hit Miami.

We stayed overnight in Miami, and then started our treak back home, little did we know it would take two days.

First we were supposed to leave at 3:45 PM, we didn't leave till 8:30PM because of a storm in Chicago (we missed our connecting flight so we had to spend the night there. The next day, 300 flights were cancelled and they didn't send us home (we had the option of going to Vancouver or Toronto) then home, we chose Toronto which was supposed to of left at 9:10AM, it left Chicago at noon.

We got to Toronto , went through Customs with no luggage (it went to Winnipeg by itself) so we had more paperwork. The flight home was supposed to leave at 10:55PM, which would of meant getting home around 1AM or so. By this time we'd had enough and we asked to be put on standby. The sweetest words we had heard for two days were when they called our name party of two, and we "RUSHED" to the plane before they changed their minds again

When the plane lifted off we both did a big sigh of relief that our adventure was almost over.

When we landed in Winnipeg, we went looking for our waywared luggage, found it in the basement of the airport in the Customs lockup, they had cut off the special customs locks we had purchased for that reason so they could open them, they had searched them and made a mess (but our booze was still there)

At 10PM we finally got home, two days later but happy to be home. We called everyone and told them we were safe, climbed into bed, and slept like the dead till 10 AM the next day.