Canada Cruise

For all of you who are eagerly waiting for the details of our fun and exciting Canadian cruise, keep reading.... also all of those folks who have never taken a cruise and would like to get a first hand report, be ready to empty your wallets !

The journey started on Friday, June 17th. TV decided to take Megabus instead of other modes of transportation, a decision which we will regret for some time to come. We reached the 10th & H st location in DC and after waiting for some 15-20 min past the scheduled departure time, we saw this enormous double decker Megabus approaching. We decided to hop on the top deck of the bus. It looked cool and felt cool..... All was fine till we drove for about 1 hour.... we saw a few people feeling a bit chilly inside... we laughed at them :-) and then we felt cold too ... and the driver had no idea how to control the cooling system.... we took a break at a rest area on the NJTP.... that was the best thing ever... the warm, humid weather which we would normally hate felt like gift from God....

We reached NYC around 1 AM and hung out with friends... we ate at San Loco in the city and decided to rest at Mitesh's.... We met his new friend, Mondo... and while you are thinking what a weird name, let us warn you that he wasn't human... it was a black monkey dog who can totally scare the shit out of you (= Tina) in dark... Mondo drove Tina (and Varun) out of th house early in the morning, so they went to her sister, Meena's place (Mitesh joined them there after packing).

Having been burned that last time we (TV) booked a cruise, Varun started persuading everyone to leave for the Pier early (to the point of being a bit annoying !). We managed to leave by 3:30 PM, arrived at the pier at 4 and got into the line for immigration. Tnia approahced, thinking, this can't be too bad we all have our docs in order -- yeah right! The agent stared at our docs (= Mitesh and Varun) for what seems like eternity, then we found that that Mitesh needed to provide his current India address. This doesn't sound too bad, until... Mitesh informs us that he has no idea what it is. Recall that it is 4 pm EST, so it's the middle of the night in India. Too bad. He had to call his parents in the middle of the night to get his own home address in india. After that they confiscated (kept) his passport and told him they'd give it to him after the Canadian officials review it in Canada.... All information having been duly provided to Carnival, they gave us our "Sail and Sign" cards and we boarded. Lesson one: its not a boat, its an enormous ship. It's big enough to fit a Hilton and a few Days Inns...

We promptly went into our interior room.... As we were beginning to wonder the space requirements for the 3 of us, the reality hit us that Carnival grossly miscalculated the average height of an adult! The 3rd bed was max 5 feet long and fitting Mitesh in it would need some gymnastics .... so we did what anyone else would do, we ignored the beds and left our room to explore the ship. We quickly learned about our "commute" on the ship, the 24 hour pizza and ice cream, the honking of a ship and most importantly how high the ship is as we successfully passed under the Verrazano holding our breaths... Soon everyone on board was required to attend the boat drill which was nothing more than a total waste of time. At dinner we met our "friendly" dinner mates with whom we would be spending the rest of our "romantic" evenings. On one end was the mother with 2 girls with one of them already beginning to look sick and on the other end was this 40 something white man with his "lovely" asian wife, Julia, and asian-looking kid (the milkman's kid ?) Other than the occasional chatter of the 3 of us, our dinner table was mostly quiet. We exactly knew how the next 4 days will be :-). (Preview: Julia would continue to be curious about what three vegetarian souls are eating and will laugh after hearing the answer as if we are pathetic.) After dinner we attended the welcome session (Jorge, the entertainment director's chatter) and went on a bar hopping tour with the "fun patrol". It was impossible not to notice that the people who worked really really enjoyed their work. At first we thought it was a fake smile and excitement but it continued forever. Internal satisfaction makes a huge difference in customer service.

Day 2: We woke up bright and early and after breakfast went on the Lido deck to enjoy the nice weather and the ocean. We went on the water slide and discovered (the hard way) that except for the water in the rooms and drinking water, most other water on the ship was salty. We later found out that the ship actually desalinized the ocean water on board! We were slowly getting used to the idea of eating 24 hours a day. We went for lunch, then tea time and then dinner - a constant reminder of America's biggest problem, overeating. Tina had this great idea to attend the "sunset stretch" (at 5 pm). Of course, the sun didn't set while we were stretching. However, we did stretch, so the guys had to do some weight-lifting to feel manly. Tina then took her revenge by kicking MV's asses playing air hockey in the "underground tokyo." (MV did fight to claim their dignity back by the last game). We hung out in the Piano bar for some time where the live entertainment was the pianist singing non-stop for hours without ruining his voice. At night in the Karoke bar, we watched an "adult" comedy show, basically something we used to call in college as non-veg jokes. We decided to go to bed "early" in anticipation of Mitesh's 7:30 am "meet-n-greet" with Canadian immigration in Saint John.

Day 3: M-life woke up at 630 ish for his rendevous with the Canadians, they asked simple questions, and it all went very smoothly except for waiting for the immigration officials. TV woke up at about 7 (grr..... grumpy Tina), MTV quickly ate (rather sped past breakfast) and hopped in a cab to the reversing falls park where we were supposed to do the Jetboat ride. After some persuasive French accented English, Tina decided to do the ride with MV. We finished the ride completely soaked in water thanks to Andre, the pirate look-alike jet boat driver. Basic concept of tides in Saint John: due to the invasion of the ocean into the river, the tide level increases by 30-40 feet twice a day and reverses the course of saint john river. You can imagine how bumpy jet boat ride will be in the midst of tug of war between river and ocean. As we got off the boat we were greeted by Dana from Eastern Outdoors who quickly drove us to Dipper Harbor for Kayaking. On our way Varun decided to ask Dana why "Fundy national park" is called so and she had no clue why. The drive was about 40 min from Saint John. We arrived in the middle of no-where and were greeted by our lovely Kayak instructor, Heather (yes, MV thought she was cute, and it turns out that she's smart too: she's a physics college student). Following a quick tutorial, we wore our outfits and sat in our Kayaks. And for the first time in Mitesh's life he wore a skirt (it helps keep your lower body dry in the kayak). We spent the next 2 hours doing some good upper body workout (a.k.a Kayaking) with Tina "officially tired" trying to row past the "yummy" sea weed. Heather showed us some lobster pounds: fenced enclosure where lobsters are bred. We all pulled ashore to relax and take some pictures. We drove back to Saint John not sure how to make the best possible use of the hour or so left. Also on our way back Tina realized she was missing her sweater which apparently was at the Jetboat ride place. Dana was kind enough to drive us there and fetch the sweater and take some pictures of MTV and the reversing falls. When we got back, we decided to look for food (yeah, veggie food in a port town). After some wandering around, we found a Mexican restaurant (Mexicana Rosa, I believe) and quickly ordered food. If there is one thing I cannot complain about Canada, it's their food (and the friendly people and the outdoors.. and..and...). Man, these guys know how to cook food. That mexican place had the best rolls (mexican spring rolls) I have ever had in my life, simply amazing. We also tried few local beers including Rickards..... We rushed (ran at the speed of light) back and boarded the ship, being one of the last few passengers to do so. Tired as hell, we unintentionally napped for a while. We got up, went to the Sushi bar, ate the veggie rolls and drank some warm Saki. We ended up bar hopping some more had martinis at the wine bar, did some cha-cha (how can we forget Mlife's desi girls?) and then ate dinner (with another bottle of wine). To kill time, we went to Karaoke and decided to murder two beautiful songs on the stage: Sweet Home Alabama and All Stars. The Burlesque show was quite high tech and very well executed.

Day 4: We decided to take-it-easy in Halifax (yeah, that's what MV said to Tina, but you judge if this was a relaxing day). We got out of the ship by 10 AM, found a bike rental place (thanks to Mitesh's b'bery) and rented 3 bikes. We started biking towards the Citadel (uphill) making fun of Gujju-English on our way (Halifax, a.k.a. "Helifex" in Gujarati)... hahaha.... We wandered around on the fort shooting pictures (from Mitesh's camera which is lost now :-( (found as of 31st July 09)). We biked to Point Pleasant park and then biked back to Garrison Brewery (which is essentially on the port). We had a distillery tour during which we learned a lot about beer. Apparently, the only difference between beer and whiskey is distillation and aging; both quite expensive processes. Also, the bitterness in beer comes from the plant named hops. The tour ticket gave each of us 6 samples of beer and a full pint. We had some of the samples, recalled that we had yet to return the bikes and we didn't really want to be biking under the influence (BUI)! After returning the bikes, on the advise of bike store guys we took a quick snack at Wooden Monkey and again had great food. As we now only had 15 minutes to have the remaining beer samples and get on the ship, we again ran like the light, consumed (= chugged) the remaining beers at Garrsion and continued our sprint to the ship. We would have been one of the last people on the ship, but a Carnival-sponsored tour bus pulled up to the port right as we were running into the line. On ship, we showered, went sushi tasting again, ate dinner and went to the main lobby bar, got martinis and discussed what will be some of the most funniest conversations - shaadi.com and the portrait pictures of girls. We even decided to take a few shaadi.com style pictures !!

(there is something wrong b/c we only did sushi once and only did martini's once).

Day 5: "Fundy" at sea or so we like to call the Fun Day at Sea. Varun and Mitesh decided to go to the gym the first thing in the morning. Having duly ditched Tina, MV tried to find her on the Lido desk during breakfast -- this was no small feat as there are 4000 people on this ship. Our breakfast conversation went from one topic to another and landed upon a discussion about vegetarian options in Greenland. Having eaten breakfast, we went to Jorge's disembarkation talk, ate lunch, and then went to the top deck to watch the water gush past the ship. We thought of contingency plan of what to do if one of us fell in the water. Then we watched something called Marriage game where three couples were asked same question and see if they come up with same answer. Surprisingly one of that couple got married on the same cruise in the beginning days. Mitesh had a lot of fun laughing at married couples including us. Surprisingly there was a cellphone tower on the ship to make sure we keep communicating with our loved ones while paying roaming charges. We then decided to soak in the sun and jot down all the keywords for our vacation so that we can blog about it later (and we were too lazy to bring my laptop from our room, so we made good use of Mitesh's b'berry). In the evening we went to one of the 3 or so salt-water pools and decided to re-live our younger days splashing and jumping in water. We ate dinner, along with a bottle of sparkling wine, true to our tradition, and said goodbye to the nice asian-american couple. Then we sat on the Casino bar for the farewell "party" not knowing that it would be one of the longest nights on board for us (ask Mitesh for details ... somehow he's managed to remember after the cruise).

A lot of people have qualms about going on cruises saying that they are not very adventurous. To be honest, one can make it as fun and adventurous as one wants. We had some of the very best times on the ship and doing our activities on shore. Bottom line, if you haven't done cruising, it's time to do one....