I'm back. We spent two weeks on the high seas and had a great trip. So even before I read all the posts to see what has been going on in Rinkville, I'm going to bore you with part one of my travel report. This is unproofed and unedited so excuse the errors:

Sailing Across the Continental Divide

October 17, 2003 We left Knoxville airport for Chicago and then San Diego. It's always wise to arrive a day early for a cruise. We stayed near the water front and enjoyed Chinese and Mexican food. We walked along the boardwalk and watched the ships, birds, and tourist. San Diego is a lively town.

The next day, we went to the cruise ship dock. It was within walking distance of the hotel, but with two-weeks luggage, we took a cab. The GTS Infinity had not arrived yet, but we soon saw her sailing around the bend. This is a big ship. She is classed as a Panamax ship, which means that if she was any larger, she would not fit in the Panama Canal.

On board we were escorted to our stateroom which had a balcony. It was located on the port side near the rear of the ship, on deck seven. We met our steward, a young gentleman from India named Darrell. Next we investigated the mountains of food that are always present on cruise ships. The Celebrity line excels in the food department. This was to be our tenth cruise and our fifth on Celebrity, so I guess you could call them our favorite line. It was also our first two-week cruise. Others had been one week, which never seemed long enough.

At dusk, we sailed out of San Diego bay and turned south along the Baja California coast. After the lights of Tijuana faded from view, we were out to sea too far to see land. We ate in the main dining room and later saw a show in the big theatre. Our servers in the dining room were a gentleman from Honduras, named Angel Cruz, and his assistant, Myia a young lady from Bosnia. These two people, plus Darrell, our steward, were largely responsible for making this a great cruise.

Monday was a day at sea. We had no trouble finding our way around the ship, since we had sailed on her sister ship, the Millennium, on a recent cruise. We enjoyed the spa and hot tubs, saw another show that night and generally relaxed and watched the Pacific slide by. Infinity is powered by gas turbine engines and is very fast for a large ship. We normally cruised at 22 knots, but at times we ran 25 knots for hours at a time. At night, speed was usually reduced to about 14 knots. There is very little vibration with gas turbines and you don't see any visible exhaust from the stacks.

Most cruise ships have a big lounge up high at the front. Infinity has the Constellation Lounge on deck twelve just above the bridge, which means that I could sit up there and have an even better view than the Captain. On cruise ships, unlike on-land lounges, you are welcome to lounge around in the comfortable chairs without buying a drink. There is live music in the evenings, and we did a lot of lounge-hopping.

The entertainment on this cruise was the best we have encountered. There must have been 40 or 50 musicians on board, not counting the singers and dancers. We heard everything from banjo music to a concert piano. There was the band that played for the shows, usually six musicians, a number of combos, and several instrumentalists who played solo or with groups. Can you imagine "Fiddler on the Roof" played on a banjo? I'm not talking about a tune or two. It was practically the whole score. One violin player did classical, pop, and country. He also cracked a few jokes, and yes, he played "Fiddler on the Roof" too. Also on board were comics, jugglers, a magician who played Chopin on a grand piano, a male quartet, and a guitarist who played everything from Nashville to Vienna. A group of singers and dancers gave us a touch of Broadway with music and scenes from "Phantom," "42nd Street," "West Side Story," "A Chorus Line," and just about everything else that ever played on Broadway. Nobody ever sang "Carmen" or "Phantom" any better than that.

OK, that's it for now.
Part two will include ports along the Mexican coast. I'll post it about Friday. Believe it or not, I'm trying to keep this brief, but that is hard to do with the trip of a lifetime.
Howard