Run, Forrest, run!

You have to check out this video of a shrimp running on a treadmill.

(If you are on a Mac, open the link in Firefox instead of Safari.)

Grrrr

They are done! Now I'll have warm little Tiger feet!

Overdue review #2

Okay, here is my next installment of our Valor cruise review. Today, Grand Cayman!
I must say that the excursion we took made this island for me. Otherwise, it's too developed and expensive with big chain hotels. In many ways, you may as well be in South Florida. That being said, we took and excursion to Hell (yes, really), the Cayman Turtle Farm, and Stingray City.

First, to Hell.

Hell is an area of fossilized black coral in the middle of the island. There are many theories about when it was first called "Hell", but it really does look like the end of the world or something. It's interesting how it's totally surrounded by this lush greenery.

They also made it a town and it has its own post office. We sent ourselves a postcard from there and it came with a postmark from Hell, Cayman Islands. Kind of cool.


Next, onto the Cayman Turtle Farm. This was what I was most looking forward to on this trip and it did not disappoint. It is amazing to see the green sea turtles so close up and to get to hold them and pet them. They are beautiful and gentle. I put my hand in the tank and started rubbing this one turtle's neck and he closed his eyes and pushed his head into my hand. So sweet.


I know that only about 10% raised at the farm are released into the wild, but the Cayman people eat turtle and it's better for them to be farm raised than to be caught in the wild. And 10% released is still more than are surviving in the wild. So even though I was conflicted, seeing the farm changed my mind about the process. The facility is nice and clean with big tanks (even though all the turtles like to pile on top of each other).



Next, on to Stingray City!
I chose not to feed them (mostly because I didn't want squid all over my hands for the rest of the day), but we just stood in the water and watched them swim around us. They are very curious and cool. The stingrays don't see very well but have an incredible sense of smell, so they swim up to you and kind of bump you and swim off if they don't smell food. They feel like giant wet mushrooms underneath and like fine sandpaper on top.

Oh, admire me

I am ever so proud of my alpaca leaf lace shawl that got finished this weekend. I think you should bow down to my talent.

Bad! Bad! Bad!

Two o'clock in the afternoon and even though I'm wearing suede clogs, my sock-less feet are cold. So I look down at what I'm wearing and realize that I really don't have any grey socks, so I ordered sock yarn. That's right, sock yarn. Another 2 skeins of Knit Picks Essential Tweed in Flint. So I'll have grey socks in like a month or so...

Overdue review #1

Here is my first vacation review and today I will focus on the ship, the Carnival Valor. First of all, it is beautiful. It was built in 2004 and feels very new and clean. We had great team waiters, Christopher from Guyana and Diskul from Thailand. Very attentive and personable. I loved the buffets in Rosie's, too, although S. was disappointed in the lack of chocolate chip cookies. We had awesome Reubens from the deli and I had great fish and chips one day for lunch. I also always like the "Taste of Nations" and Caribbean day was my favorite again.
The ship is very smooth. I never really felt the motion of the waves at all even when it was really choppy overnight and in Costa Maya. The ship is really big, but I think they do a good job with the layout so it doesn't feel that way. There were 4 buffet lines and plenty of pool chairs. The pool slide was so much fun! One problem was that I felt like it was pretty smoky in the public areas, especially since the wine bar is in the middle of the hall and there were always people smoking there. The casino was also really smoky, but that's to be expected. We also felt like the social staff wasn't that good, but it could also be that we compared them to the best social team we had on the Elation in May.




Pictures are the main pool and slide (above), dining room, atrium, and the Ivanhoe theater.

Potential

Well, it's official. Joe Girardi has been fired as the Marlins' manager - one can only hope we'll see him back in Cubby blue.