Leaving Houston on Emerald Princess

We finally pulled away from the Houston Cruise Terminal dock at 10am Monday, a full 18 hours after our scheduled departure on Sunday afternoon. Due to the fog the pilots weren't keen on piloting and the channel was finally closed completely. As we have been passing a steady stream of freighters, oil tankers and other large ships just inches (OK yards) off our balcony we can understand why. Apparently the channel is very shallow, so they dredge the middle but that dredged section is not very wide making them hesitant to allow two-way traffic with no visibility and a bunch of oil platforms dotting the landscape.

Speaking of Houston Harbor, we are actually lucky that we ended up where the ship was docked. I almost always book our own night-before accommodations and transportation to the ship, and as we had sailed into Galveston Harbor previously I researched hotels and taxis for this trip. In the end I got lazy and signed up for the ship's hotel and bus package which was just as well----because we are just now sailing past Galveston's cruise terminal which is quite a bit further down the channel than the new Houston Cruise terminal which we sailed from!

We do now have a new winner in the "longest time to deliver luggage" category. Beating Rome, the former champion by a good 10 minutes, Houston-Bush takes the honors with 70 minutes to get the bags to the carousel after landing. And the apparent cause---RAIN! Perhaps we should send them to Seattle for a little training.

On board we have settled into the ways of things. Fritz was off to the gym at the crack of dawn, while Karen risked life and limb at line-dancing. Positioned between the large contingent of ladies from Texas and the college girls I had the bouffant-haired lady on my right throwing in all kinds of fancy extra steps and waving her perfectly manicured talons in my face, while the two college girls on my left, who must be the only two 20-something's to have never line-danced before, had to hold up their hands to determine which one made the "L" so they knew which was left. Still, after about 20 cruise ship lessons I can now do the Electric Slide with minimal injury or embarrassment. That said, I could have used some of my compatriots--and you know who you are!

At Trivia today we joined Maggie & Charlie from the Twin Cities and Jerry from Pasadena and came one question short from winning! And, really, who could be expected to know Ozzy Osbournes real name anyway! As we each contributed to our almost-successful bid for glory we have decided that we will stick together as a team and we may yet win that coveted fridge magnet!

Because of our late departure we will not be able to get to Roatan, Honduras and so they have substituted Costa Maya, Mexico instead. There has been much grumbling about this fact and we are disappointed that we won't be able to use our snorkel equipment in Roatan's Half Moon Bay, but we will be happy to settle for sandy and sunny and warm.

Speaking of warm---it isn't! The current temperature is 48 degrees which is much warmer than it has been. We are glad we wore our warm jackets as it was bucketing in Houston and you could still see your breath while we sat at the dock. It might be time to warm ourselves up with an Irish coffee. There were some odd liquor rules in effect until we left port. Apparently they couldn't serve Martinis but they could give you a double shot of whiskey. At dinner there were two choices of wine--one red and one white--available by the glass only. Our lovely Ukranian waiter told us she could offer us a nice glass of milk if we wanted.  Let the party begin!!!