On the Sunday of our trip to Budapest, we did indeed ride on a boat, upstream along the beautiful Danube. It was a glorious day, and everyone and his dog was out in canoes, kayaks, and motorboats. We saw people tubing and paragliding. And the town where we went was called Szentendre, after St. Andrew. It’s just north of Budapest. There we found tasty barbecued meats at a Serbian restaurant, which boasted an excellent guitarist. One thing that’s really struck me around Budapest is the amount of live music in restaurants and on the street. Much of it is of fair quality too. A ton of artists, actors, writers, and musicians reportedly live in Szentendre. And more and more tourists are showing up. I believe it’s because of the hot chocholate (forró csokoládé in Hungarian) at a little café down the street, south from the dock, across from a family of knife-makers. Here ended my search for “real” hot chocolate, that is, melted drinking chocolate in a cup to which you then add milk and whipped cream as you wish. I would gladly row 10 miles up the river for it. (Okay, 10 km in something streamlined maybe.) I think there’s also a marzipan museum and a confectionery museum, as well as a wine museum there. We took the train back into town after being waylaid at the station and serenaded by a little old fellow and his perhaps-once-tuneful violin.

Mmm, Szentendre drinking chocolate!

The next day we trundled across the bridge to the Gellért Baths to soak our cares away in the mineral-rich waters. A great way to spend a Monday if you ask me. At the lockers, there’s a cute little key attendant who locks up for you and then lets you back in when you’re done. (It’s appropriate to tip a few hundred forint.) It was nice – quite clean, not too salty, not super hot. That said, many people I know would be looking for a lot warmer pools than I found there. They also had extra things like facials and massages, and I think maybe I should have gone for one – I’ve been missing massage since class ended!

Magically healed in the fountains of life and youth and so on, we decided to do a little more walking. We climbed up to see some statues on the hill beside the Gellért, including the liberty monument, which looks to me like a lady trying to paraglide with a leaf, and St. Gellért, who, according to legend, was pushed off the hill in a barrel and died. There was also a very cool, cavernous little church, carved and dug into the side of the hill.

That evening, it was time for possibly the biggest helpings of food yet at a nearby restaurant appropriately named Fatál. Yes, it’s Hungarian for wooden plate (on which some of the menu is served), but I prefer to take it literally and without the accent. Morgan and I indulged in roast duck and wiener schnitzel of significant area. (The schnitzel was totally hanging off the edge of its fatál.) With various flavours of beer of course. And not a vegetable in sight, unless you count potatoes. Please don’t tell our moms.

After supper the guys, apparently not completely owned by the hugeness of the food, went to check out a local casino. I went home to pass out. They came back with stories of poker hands and people that tried their darndest to usher them into strip joints. Rumour has it that if you accept the invitation of such an establishment, the bill will be much more than you bargained for…

On the morning of our final day, we checked Gerbeaud off our list. It is a fancy-pants café-confectionery with tasty cakes including Morgan’s Gerbeaud torte and my alma torte. You can tell how respectable it is by the way they bring thimbles of complimentary water to your table without your having to ask. I must say though, that their version of forró csokoládé is entirely trumped by Szentendre.

Back to the Oktogon (octagonal intersection and subway stop below) and Andrássy út we went, to see the House of Terror. The building that now houses a museum was formerly chosen as headquarters for both Nazi and Communist terror organizations, and many people were tortured and interrogated inside it. It’s very well set up to tell the stories of Hungary’s double occupation (and very short-lived rebellion) through pretty much endless amounts of media. There must be several days’ worth of video alone, as well as printed material and some of the technology and other artifacts of the day. There were beautiful statues and tributes but also reconstructed prison cells, some of which I really would not have enjoyed. It can be a profound experience if you allow it, and we left reminded of sobering stories made up of many lives.

We took our last ride on the underground and strolled our last Hungarian streets, ate our last honey-cakes and said our last thank you’s to our generous hosts. We used our last few hundred forint to buy a bottle of water for the plane and we were off home again. There or thereabouts ended a lovely extended weekend away. I would highly recommend Budapest and wouldn’t mind going again myself, though we have the rest of Europe to get through. I hear Croatia is quite lovely.

Mixed and ready to drink!

Gerbeaud's Alma Torte

Diane

Gee, it’s been a little while since our last post. Time has been moving right along for us, and it’s hard to believe we really have been here for four months already! The big news this week was our friend JR was over in England for a work trip and managed to get a few days off to come visit us in Dublin! So we had our first houseguest here. Unfortunately it was in the middle of the week and I felt too guilty to ask for both days off so I just got the Wednesday off.

JR arrived Monday afternoon and Diane met him at the airport so he didn’t have to worry about finding his way to our place. On Tuesday, Diane and JR wandered through downtown Dublin catching several of the attractions down there including Trinity College, Dublin Castle, and the like. They really did a lot of walking and sightseeing! On Wednesday, we took JR to a museum, the Guinness storehouse tour, and the Jameson distillery tour. We got to the distillery for the last tour of the day and it was pretty neat. There was only a handful of people there for it and as a result we all got to do the taste testing of Jameson whiskey next to Jack Daniels and a scottish whiskey. Add to the taste test our free glass of Jameson, and we had a pretty good buzz going after those tours!

We just saw JR off to the airport this morning. I hope he enjoyed himself :) It was pretty surreal to see him here!

Outside of that, we’re getting excited about the Christmas party. It’s just a couple days away, and it really does sound like fun. We’re going to go down on Friday evening and stay that extra night so we can see a bit of the town before the party starts in the evening on Saturday. It should be a good chance to get some more photos.

The past few weeks have been pretty busy for us, but we have managed to get out to do a few things too. Diane and I went and saw the Book of Kells the previous weekend. The book was pretty neat, but the real attractions for me were the information on how much work went into making the book (and books in general back then), and the view down the Long Room which is the library on the upper floor of the building that the Book of Kells is in. Today, it’s easy to take for granted the availability of books, but back then the amount of work that went into copying and binding each book guaranteed that there really wasn’t enough for everyone.

This last Saturday, we joined in with a very large group of people to help wish Aaron a happy 30th birthday. It’s a good thing that their apartment is HUGE, or there’s no way we could’ve crammed us all in there. For this party there was a team event where teams of four competed against each other at various gaming events: Rock Band on the Wii, NHL 2009 on the XBOX, and Foosball. I got conscripted onto a very strong team (including the birthday boy himself), and we eventually went on to win the competition. It was pretty fun!

So that’s a taste of what we’ve been into. Hopefully I’ll get a blog entry in soon after the Christmas party so you can hear about that!

Morgan

This past week has been a insanely busy. It’s been a week filled with parties and late nights which has made it a bit hard to keep posting to the blog. There was even a party tonight that Diane and I passed on just to spend a quiet night relaxing a bit for the first time in over a week.

One of the noteworthy events of the week has been that Chris “Jesus” Ferguson has been in town. He played in the WSOPE and had another big tournament in London last Saturday. So he stopped by the office and I got a chance to add another poker pro to a list that’s getting pretty long.

Anyways fast forward to last night which was a scheduled company tournament: a €50 deep stack buyin tournament. Since Chris was in town, he was happy to play, which meant the tournament drew a good crowd. In all, 36 players registered which was a really good turnout. Warning: lots of poker lingo coming your way from this point on.

The tournament started out real slow for me. Apart from picking up one pot a few rotations in, I basically sat and folded a lot of hands while several players at the table spewed chips at each other. After the first break I was starting to get pretty short stacked. I picked up A6o on the button and raised, but the small blind pushed. I didn’t have many chips left so I called and didn’t like seeing my opponent flip over AQ. Luckily for me, I hit a 6 along with an Ace on the flop to double up. Not too much later, The 2nd table broke, and guess who got seated on my left? Chris Ferguson.

The next big hand in my memory happened after we had got down to the final table of 9 players. I picked up KK on the button and make a decent raise. The small blind reraises me and I pushed allin and got called by AJ of diamonds. The flop was rather exciting when two diamonds landed, but thankfully I dodged another diamond and won a monster pot — which made me chip leader by quite a bit.

The tournament got down to three players — Chris, me, and another guy that I didn’t know but who played very well. The stack sizes started to get pretty close to even, although I still had a small chip lead. Chris had a €50 bounty on his head, but unfortunately I was not going to be the one to earn that. The other guy at the table would do that when he flopped trip queens and busted Chris out in 3rd place. I guess that means I can say I beat him!

On the first hand of headsup play, the other guy limps on the button and I check with J4 of diamonds. The flop is 578 with two diamonds. I bet out, get raised, and I decided to push. I get instantly called, and get shown 78 for top two pair. I miss my flush and gutshot outs to lose the hand. So I finished a respectable 2nd place for a payday of €440. Not too bad for a couple hours of play!

So that’s how it went down. It was an honour to play with Chris, and it’s pretty cool to be able to say I beat him. I’m under no illusions that it was anything more than luck that made that the case, but I feel pretty good about most of my plays during the tournament. I probably missed a couple of plays and didn’t play all that well when we got to three handed play, but all in all I can’t feel too bad with my showing.

It’s been a really cool week, but in a way I’m glad it’s over. I’ve been out every night this week until at least midnight and it’s starting to take a toll on my ability to stay sharp.

Oh yeah, there’s new photos up on flickr too if you want to go check them out!

Morgan

Morgan and I have always had it comparatively easy, and this move is no exception.

It turns out that Irish summers are lovely – it’s been rainy and cool and cloudy and sunny without going much above a comfortable “room” temperature. All this temperate goodness while the folks at home have been cooking in those bouts of +30-35C we’ve been getting in sunny Alberta these last few years.

The winters here are supposed to be windy and rainy and generally grey and miserable so I’ve heard, which means that the middle of summer is probably the best time to begin/end a year lease (the norm here nowadays) so you can move your stuff in comfort if you so choose. It’s certainly the best time to move stuff in Canada anyway.

Once we took up tenancy in our rented suite, we had to figure out how to turn the thermostat high enough to heat up our boiler and get hot water (we actually thought there had been an oversight at the gas company for a little while before our neighbours told us the secret), and we were without the convenience of readily heated water for a day or two. Nothing that can’t be satisfactorily overcome with an electric kettle of course, but say it were the power instead of the gas, or both. (And don’t even talk to me about the crash course.) I am much better equipped to deal with that sort of thing in the summer, when natural heat and light abound (though here in Ireland they only abound so much) and I’m in a happier state because of it.

Not only in the smaller details has the timing been right but on a bigger scale as well. Both Morgan and I were able to get up and move very easily: we have no children, our parents are in good health, our siblings are doing well. In fact, Morgan’s sister was able to move into Morgan’s apartment and their parents were willing to store stuff for us, making moving even easier. Morgan had finished his contract with the U of A and managed to stay until the Second Man v. Machine match, which was certainly a defining moment in the history of the U of A CPRG (Computer Poker Research Group), and a high note on which to leave… at least officially. For my part I feel I could have contributed long term at the U of A (my team was the Canola Research Group), but I think it was good to leave while I was more replaceable. `Cause really, who can argue with seeing the world while one has the life and health to do it!

The last reason (okay, next-to-last) this transition has been so smooth is that scores of folks have done this before us. Many through the ages have traveled and settled in leaner circumstances than this, and of course there are the friendly, accessible ones who very recently made the exact same trip. There is one couple in our building, newlywed like us, another couple down the road, who’ve been so encouraging, and, in particular, Darse and Alexandra have been there for us every step of the way. We probably wouldn’t be here now if not for them.

And the last reason (I promise) is that we’ve got each other. We may disagree and do a little squabbling and squawking, but in the end it’s nice to have a partner with whom to share and recall the experiences. It’s nice to have Morgan to point things out to and share the stories of the day with and have him show me stuff and help me… and cuddle me when the day is done.

Diane

That’s right, Diane and I had a safe, if slightly stressful, trip over here. Let me tell you the story of our day(s).

The goaway party was fantastic. Despite the fact that I didn’t get the word out very well (sorry to the people who I didn’t let know about it … I really was too distracted to make sure everyone knew about it), we had more than 60 people show up for it. I’m sure glad the weather held out so that we had enough room for people to hang out. Anyways, it was great fun, and I hope everyone had a good time. I sure did!

After the go-away party, Diane and I returned to the Condo to get ourselves in a better packed state. We got there at about 1:45am, and packed until well after 3:30am before falling into bed exhausted — but we were up again early the next morning to continue packing and cleaning up our place. We then went out to Dim Sum with our parents which was a nice way to spend our last brunch in Edmonton. After that, we went back to the Condo and met up with Megan. The four of us — Megan, Mom, Diane, and I spent a couple hours working on making the condo cleaner and tying up the loose ends. We, and in particular my mom and Megan worked a miracle of a job in there — with the condo almost back in a liveable state. Which is good since Megan will want to live there soon enough.

We then trekked out to get my dad and we got a ride out to the airport where we bid farewell to my parents and Megan there. And we were off on our grand adventure!

After waiting for an hour or so, we boarded our Air Canada 767. It was a pretty nice aircraft, and we were quickly glad to find out that we had the first row of economy class seats — which meant we had tons of leg room! Sweeeet! Not only that, the airplane must’ve been newer than the last two air canada flights we’d taken between Edmonton and London because each seat had its own tv screen. We happily were able to watch our choice of several movies. I love those things.

The flight itself was pretty standard. They fed us, I watched the movies Fool’s Gold and Flawless, and also managed to get 2 hours of sleep or so! That’s like a record for me on these long haul flights!

We arrived in Dublin, and found out that we had to go through UK customs to get our bags and then take an outside route to terminal 1 to get on our aer lingus flight. Turns out this is because air canada and aer lingus don’t have a baggage agreement. Boourns. So our layover time quickly became panic time when we had to wait for our luggage, run to terminal 1, check our luggage, and then run to the boarding gate. Thankfully, the aer lingus people graciously let us check our bags (despite being overweight) and told us to run to the gate. So we did, and got there only to find out the plane was just in its initial boarding call. Whew! So I was pretty tired and stressed out, but we got on the plane and made it to Dublin.

Dublin was beautiful today. It was +21 degrees celcius, and wonderfully sunny. From the airport, we caught a shuttle bus called aircoach for €7 each that took us within a couple blocks of our temporary apartments. When we arrived, we were just in time to get our keys before the office closed at 5:00pm. Whew! Not only that, but Darse pulled up in his car before we even had a chance to go up and see our place! So him and Xan helped us find our apartment suite and got us all setup there. We caught up for a bit and then went out to see Dundrum Mall which is a huge shopping mall here in Dublin. We had dinner at a grill type restaurant — Diane and I were too tired to really make a strong decision on a restaurant so we kinda floated until we found a place that looked decent.

After dinner we wandered a bit more, but found that most places had closed up shop by 8:00 on a Sunday. Oh well, Diane and I will have more than enough time to explore the immediate vicinity shops and services.

So now we’re back to our place, and Diane has already gone to bed. She didn’t get as much sleep as me on the plane, so she was pretty tired. I’m going to follow suit pretty quickly here. I hope that someday I’ll get around to posting pictures, but no promises on it being anytime real soon. We’ll have to see.

Morgan

Lots of stuff to do, but I will post blog entries covering the remainder of our trip in the next few days. I also hope to getting around to posting pictures from the wedding and from our trip, but that might have to wait until after we’re in Ireland. There’s an awful lot of stuff to do before we leave next Saturday!

Morgan

– note: this post was written while aboard the cruise ship on the 17th of July and posted on the 19th of July after arriving back –

Well, Diane and I are now waiting for debarkation from the ship. It’s awfully early — 7:30 in the morning, and we’ve been up since 6 so that we could have breakfast. I don’t have much else to do, so I figured I’d get caught up with the blog posting.

I left off before the second musical show called “Spin”. This time around, the show was themed around a wheel with different destinations on it. After each song, they spun the wheel to get a new destination and they’d do a song around that theme. There was quite a few places they did, most of which were in the United States. We arrived a bit late, but caught songs themed around Texas, New York, New Orleans, Puerto Rico and a few others that I can’t remember. It was pretty fun actually.

After the show, we headed off to dinner. By this point we’d started to get to know our dinner partners John and Dawnyelle. Our dinner conversation was pretty fun, and we had a pretty good time. There was escargo on the menu, which is something I’ve never tried. John mentioned that they were there, and then it became something we had to try. So the four of us split an order of escargo. It was sure buttery and garlicy … and you really couldn’t taste what the snail tasted like. It kind of had a texture similar to calimari, which I suppose makes sense. So, one thing off the list of things to try! For a main course, both Diane and I had some battered fish and shrimp. It was fairly tasty, although some of our other dinners were better.

After dinner, rather than going to see the “R-rated” hypnosis show, we decided to just head to bed. The next day would be our Ensenada excursion, so we didn’t want to stay up too late for a show that maybe wasn’t that exciting. I imagine if he standup guy was back, we might’ve stayed up for him.

We slept in a little more than we had when we hit Cabo, but that’s partly because our excursion didn’t leave until 10:45. This time, we went to have breakfast at Tiffany’s (that’s what the buffet restaurant is called) and then got off the ship well in advance of our tour. It was a nice day though, so we wandered around the little market, and sat in the shade for a little while before heading off on our tour.

The tour we had signed up for was a kayaking trip — the first leg of which was a one hour bus ride to the site. The main tourist attraction in Ensenada is a natural blowhole called El Bufadora. This formation is a place where air pressure builds up in a natural pocket and every few seconds the blowhole sprays water up high into the air. Our kayaking would bring us within a few metres away fromwhere the water exits.

The bus ride was fairly nice. Our tour guide was very excited and talked almost all the way there. She told us about the city of Ensenada, about the state we were in, and about Mexico. She gave us shopping and bargaining advice. She did a pretty good job, and her English was really quite good so it was pretty informative.

After getting off the bus, we got a quick lesson in kayaking from a friendly guy named Carlos. From there, we walked a little ways down to the beach where a bunch of two-man kayaks were sitting. One by one, the kayak tour guides pushed each boat into the water where we paddled out a little ways. The water was beautifully clear, so we could see quite a ways down. The biggest feature in the water was by far the large kelp forests — our kayaking took us through several patches of the stuff. It’s pretty crazy how large these plants must be. We couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean anywhere, but the kelp grows on the bottom and extends their branches to the top of the water and they extend across the water for quite a ways. A pretty incredible sight.

On the way out to the blowhole we spotted several dolphins. It’s pretty cool to see them swimming along not really all that far away. The trip to the blowhole was pretty short, but we sat in the water for awhile to watch it. I risked bringing my little camera along so I took it out and took several photos and videos of the blowhole in action. It was pretty neat to see it from our vantage point, and I’m pretty sure that’s the best way to see it. The vantage point from land really wasn’t nearly as good since you don’t get to see the bottom of the spray.

After the tour guides took anyone who wanted to closer to the blowhole, we started paddling back to the beach. On the way back, Diane and I spotted a seal! It was awfully cute. On our way back, we’d see it several times coming up for air, but we never managed to get a photo of it. We got surprisingly close to it, actually — and every time he came up we paddled a little closer. I wonder if it thought we were stalking it.

The tour guides helped us get up on the beach from our kayaks and we walked back to the bus to wash off the sand and dry off a bit. The bus tour guide was very excited to take us to the market leading towards the blowhole — so even though it wasn’t officially part of our tour, we got an extra hour to wander through the market. It was quite interesting … the people there were quite eager to sell us stuff. At times they were quite pushy. In preparation for our kayaking, Diane and I forgot to pack some money with us, so we actually couldn’t buy anything. It was kind of amusing being hassled into someone’s store to look at their stained glass, but not having money to purchase anything. Of course, the guy there didn’t know that … but we did. Some of the stuff on sale was pretty odd. There were several drug stores down the stretch selling all kinds of spam-subject drugs like viagra and cialis. One guy went so far as to touch my arm and say something along the lines of “you could go all-night baby”. I was a little creeped out to say the least. Makes a good story though.

We wandered through the market for a little ways, taking some free samples of churros, and homemade bread. It helped us last until we got back to the ship. We got back to the bus well before our 3:00 meetup time, and waited around for the rest of our tour people to come back from the market. There was a group of four that were late, and we came very close to leaving them behind but thankfully they got back just in time. The bus ride back was kind of relaxing and I had a very quick nap.

Arriving back at the ship, we cleaned up and then wandered around the ship for a bit. There was supposed to be ball room dance music playing in one of the lounges, but when we showed up there was nobody there. I guess nobody showed up, so they stopped (or never started?). So we hung around for a little bit. Diane had a nap, before we went off to dinner. Our last dinner with John and Dawnyelle was fun. We exchanged pictures and email addresses. Maybe they’ll come visit us in Ireland some day. I had veal parmigiani for dinner, and Diane had the salmon. Both were pretty tasty. We chatted for awhile after dinner and then wandered back to our room where we stayed for a little while before the 10:30 show that evening. The neat thing about the last show was they had been doing auditions at karaoke for some well known artists like Garth Brooks, Brittany Spears, Madonna, Elton John, Elvis, Ricky Martin, etc. The best ones were picked and they put on a show where these people got to get up on stage dressed up like the artists they were impersonating. It was actually pretty fun. The guy who did Garth Brooks sounded almost exactly like him which was pretty awesome. The rest of them ranged in quality a bit, and some definately looked a bit nervous which is totally understandable. It was a neat idea that worked pretty well I think.

After the show was over, Diane and I went off to collapse. In order to get up in time for breakfast, we had to get up pretty early so we set an early wakeup call at 6am. It came too fast, but both of us woke up pretty quickly. We showered, packed ourselves up, and moved out of our room in pretty short order and made it to breakfast a little before 7:00. Breakfast was rather nice — we went for the dining room where we got full service. It didn’t take too long for us to get our croissants, eggs benedict, fruit juice, and coffee. It was pretty tasty, but by the time we were finished and sat around for a bit, it was only 7:45.

So now we’re sitting in one of the lounges waiting for our debarkation number to be called. They’ve gone through numbers 1-9 so far, and we’re number 16. Once we get called we can head off the ship and head to the airport where we’ll wait until 3:20 to leave San Diego. It’s gonna be a bit of a long day methinks. Still, it’s a bit hard to believe our honeymoon is almost over. In some ways it’d be nice to stick around a bit longer, but it’ll be nice to be back home too.

Morgan

– note: this post was written while aboard the cruise ship on the 15th of July and posted on the 19th of July after arriving back –

To continue where I left off, Diane and I headed off to the captain’s reception to go enjoy some pre-dinner cocktails and appetizers. They introduced the senior officers to us, and we got to hear more about what was coming up in the next day or two. Shortly after the reception, we wandered over to the dining hall to have our “Cruise Elegant” dinner. We had lobster and shrimp, which was quite tasty … both Diane and I particularly enjoyed the shrimp — they were quite large and juicy! For dessert, I had a chocolate melting cake which was wonderfully chocolatey. The loud woman was there again, but she wasn’t as bad as she had been the night before at dinner which was a welcome relief.

After Dinner there was a show in the main show room called Rythm, so we wandered over that way and found ourselves a seat to watch the musical. It was okay, but I was a little weirded out by some of the costumes the dancers were wearing. There was some questionable choices I believe … some of them were just very strange!

Anyways, after that, there was a midnight “R-rated” standup comedy show by the same guy who did the standup show in the welcome show on the first night. It was quite a good show actually. He did a pretty decent job, and we laughed at a fair number of his jokes. He did get a heckler though from the audience which was rather interesting. The heckler really didn’t have much content, but she certainly had a lot to say. The guy handled her about as well as you might expect, and eventually she shut up. The last joke of the night was pretty funny again, so he once again did a good job of ending his show on a high note.

We headed off to bed right away after the show since we had to get up early the next morning to get off the ship in Cabo San Lucas. Before going to bed though, we filled out the continental breakfast room service form so that we could get something to eat before heading off the ship. The room service on the ship is complimentary, which is pretty sweet. So we figured this would give us a backup plan just in case we slept in.

The next morning we got our wakeup call and stumbled out of bed and had breakfast. Bagels and creamcheese, some fruit, coffee, and some smoked salmon. A nice filling breakfast before our busy day in Cabo San Lucas. We finished off breakfast and went down to get off the ship. There is no concrete dock in Cabo, so we anchored in the bay and were brought to shore by tender boats. The first thing we had to find was somebody under the “Canyon Canopy” sign for our excursion.

Our excursion was a canyon zip-line, rock climbing and rappelling trip. The first stage of which was to get in a van and drive for about an hour out to the site. Our driver, Alex, was a bit of a wild driver. He sped down the highway a bit faster than I would’ve liked and tail gated a lot more than I would’ve liked, but we made it there safely in the hot desert.

After a quick safety and introductory session, we started the trek. It was quite a lot of fun! There were several rope ziplines, a rock climbing wall, a “commando bridge” which turned out to be a rope across a canyon that you had to walk on holding onto a second rope, and a rappel. It was a lot of fun, and pretty wild.

It took probably 2 and half hours or so to go through the canyon, and we were pretty tired after the whole thing. They fed us PB&J sanwhiches, fresh fruit, and chips and salsa — and most importantly ice cold water. The only bad thing about the trip was they wouldn’t let me take my camera on it. They claimed safety concerns, which were probably fair to some extent, but I would’ve loved to have it with me. As a “replacement”, one of the people with them brought his camera along and took pictures of people as they navigated the course. The problem was, he wasn’t very good at getting good photos, and didn’t take any photos of the scenery (which was really what I was interested in). Plus, to makes matter worse, they charged $12 a photo, or $79 for a CD full of … 8 photos. Sound ridiculous to you? Yeah, to me too. I’m convinced that if the photographer took more pictures of the surrounding area, and sold a CD full of all the photos you liked for $30, just about everyone would buy one. I would, and I’m a cheap Canadian.

But that’s my rant. We were driven back to Cabo San Lucas where we went straight to the ship via a tender. After cleaning up, and taking a quick nap, we went off to see the hypnosis show. Diane and I arrived a bit late, so we found a seat a little on the side, but we caught most of the show. It was mildly amusing, but I guess hypnotism doesn’t appeal to me quite as much as it does to some.

Afterwards it was dinner time so we went and enjoyed quite a few helpings of appetizers before the main course. Only one of the other couples at our table showed up. I figure the other ones got a little hammered in Cabo :).

Rather than attempt to attend any other shows that night after dinner, Diane and I retired to bed much earlier and went to bed early after our big excursion. We slept right in to ten and from then relaxed for a little while longer before going up for another sit down lunch in the dining room. There wasn’t a lot on the schedule today that we felt we wanted to do, so after waffling a bit, we went up to the deck to read and relax in the sun. After a couple hours, I had got a bit pink from the sun, and decided to come in for a bit. I hit up the pokerpro automated poker table for a little while. I didn’t make out very well, but I got a chance to give it a try anyways, so that was cool. I went back to join Diane and we wandered up for the end of high tea.

Again, today’s schedule hasn’t really appealed to us that much so we just kind of hung out for a bit and eventually ended up back at our cabin, so that’s where we are right now. There’s another musical show at 7:00 before dinner so we’ll probably do that. At the moment we’re watching finding forrester on the cabin television. I love that movie.

Morgan

– note: this post was written while aboard the cruise ship on the 13th of July and posted on the 19th of July after arriving back –

Diane and I are on a cruise ship waiting for the captain’s reception and formal dinner. This is the 2nd night of our honeymoon cruise, and I’ve disconnected myself from the interwebs for the duration of the trip. While internet is available, I don’t really like paying the premium for it at this point so I’ll just check email when I get home.

So yesterday was our first cruise day. We hung out in our hotel room in the morning for a little while and had breakfast before checking out right before noon and wandering over to the dock where the Elation was sitting there waiting to be boarded. After a surprisingly smooth check-in process, we boarded the ship and the first thing we did was pursue food. Our room wasn’t going to be ready for another 45 minutes or so, so we needed to pass some time which we did by finding a table in Tiffany’s restaurant.

There was a lot of people there for lunch, so we just kind of hung out and took food from the short lineup areas which included a fruit and salad bar and the 24 hour soft ice cream bar. That was pretty fun. After relaxing a bit, we went down to check out our cozy little room. It’s nothing particularly special, but it’s certainly comfortable. There’s even a fake window with curtains to make it look like a hotel room (I’m not sure it’s really all that necessary).

After stowing our carry on luggage in our room, we wandered out to explore the ship a little. This is our first cruise so we needed to check out how the ship was organized and what it had to offer. I don’t know how the Elation compares to other ships, but it has a pretty wide array of rooms and conveniences. The cabins are down low, with our cabin on the Upper Deck (3rd floor from the bottom of the passenger cabins, with one above ours). On the Empress Deck, there’s a bar in the middle in a wide open room where you can see all the floors higher than it. A couple floors up is the promenade deck which is the only floor where you can walk from one length of the ship to the other without going through cabin areas. Most of the action goes on either on the promenade deck or up or down one floor. The restaurants are one floor below on the Atlantic deck, and the pool and buffet (with the 24 hour pizza and ice cream bar) one floor up on the Lido deck.

We found out most of the information by joining a whirlwind tour starting at 2:45. After the tour, we had a few moments before joining the people for the mandatory safety drill. That was a whole lot of boring-ness, but I imagine it’s a good idea so people know what to do if something goes wrong. Not that that’s high on the expectation list.

We were supposed to leave at 4:00, but we didn’t quite get going right away. Eventually though, we did set off and Diane and I watched the depart on the top deck at the rear of the ship with a good view of the rock/blues band that played for us while we set off. We watched the ship negotiate the bay outside San Diego and after a little while we were cruising down the west coast.

After awhile we returned to our room to get unpacked and do a bit of laundry so we could make it through the remaining days with enough clean clothes. We have the late dinner session at 8:15, so there was lots of time to fit in laundry and we basically relaxed for awhile while waiting for the clothes to be ready.

We headed up for dinner a little early and found our assigned table. There was a nice couple already seated when we got in so we chatted a bit. Another couple came by not too much later and they basically took over the conversation. Actually, it was the woman who took over the conversation. She chatted, loudly, throughout just about the entire dinner which wasn’t all that pleasant. My poor right ear :(.

Dinner was actually pretty good. I got Fried shrimp for an appetizer and pan-seared fish (Starts with a T, white fish) for my main course. It was quite tasty! Diane got portobello mushroom for an appetizer and steak for her main course. The steak was okay, but it was no Alberta beef. Dessert was also pretty good. Diane got some cheesecake, and I got some sort of black forest concoction. Both were pretty good, although I think Diane won with the better dessert this go around.

Immediately after dinner there was a welcome aboard show, so we went there after a quick stop at the Piano Bar. In that room there literally is a piano bar – a bar with a bunch of keys on it. Diane and I both enjoyed that a lot.

The welcome show was interesting. There was some rather high energy dancing, and singing, and then a comedian came on. He wasn’t too shabby — he got a few laughs out of us, though we’ve seen better. Tonight he’s going to do an R-rated show … we’ll see how that goes.

After the welcome show, we came back to our cabin to collapse and get a bit of rest before the next full day at sea.

This morning we woke up and went to have a little bit of breakfast from the buffet. I started out with a slice of pizza, and then a bowl of fruit from the buffet. Next, we consulted our list of stuff to do and ended up going to the shore excursion talk. We got some tips on what to expect on the excursions and some descriptions of some of the excursions. We’d already chosen ours, so we just went to listen and see if there was any good advice for us to check out.

After that we ended up heading to the dining room for lunch. I didn’t realize that we’d have a formal dining option for lunch, but it turns out there was, and I’m glad we checked that out. It was rather good! I had some more pan seared fish (a different one this time), with some california rolls for an appetizer and creme caramel for dessert. Mmm, tasty. Although the california rolls were strangely sweet.

Unfortunately, lunch made us miss the Bar Mixology session. Whoops. But we did go on to a wine tasting seminar which was rather cool. We tried 5 different types of wines. Two whites, a white zinfandel, and two reds. I learned a little bit, but still have a lot to learn about wine.

We hung out for a bit before heading to high tea back at the piano bar. We got some tea and several little tea snacks. Lots of little tasty things including cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon on toast, and a bunch of sweets. After tea, we went up and played some win, lose, or draw — pretty much pictionary. Our team won. Both Diane and I contributed a bunch to our cause by stealing a point from the other team with “Jockey”, and drawing birdhouse (me), walking the dog (diane), and sandcastles (also diane). That was pretty fun.

So now it’s just about time for the captain’s reception and I need to change into my formal clothes (just a nice shirt and pants). It’s been a fun couple days and we’re both excited to hit Cabo San Lucas in the morning to do our zipline and rapelling session. It should be lots of fun!

Morgan

Yesterday came and went in a big crazy-fun blur. I’m still trying to settle myself down and let the fact that I’ve been married to the most wonderful woman I can imagine sink in. I don’t really have time at this moment to talk my way through the whole day, but before I forget them, I just want to jot down some quick highlights from the big day from my perspective, and also thank the people who volunteeered for various tasks and who all did a fantastic job.

Highlights from the weekend:

• There was a lot of people at the rehearsal dinner that Diane’s parents put on for us. It was very welcoming.
• Food at the rehearsal dinner was beef or chicken burgers, with all the fixings. Salads and beans were also available in plenty. Dessert was a full out sundae and banana split bar. I was reminded of Marble Slab’s selection.
• In the middle of the rehearsal, my Grandpa says the line where anyone who might object to the marriage say something. A couple seconds later a huge crack of thunder goes over our heads. I look up at the ceiling and say… “Oh really?”.
• Several of the groomsmen stayed over at my place the night before the wedding. It was a whole lot better to spend it with some good friends. I think I would’ve had a whole lot more trouble getting to sleep if I was on my own all night building up the next day in my head. They helped keep me calm and relaxed (as much as possible anyways).
• Waiting in the church for the Bride and her bridesmaids to arrive was pretty fun. The guys hung out in a side room and it was a little surreal to be getting so many sneaky waves as the many people I knew passed by the room’s door.
• I’m not used to being the centre of attention.
• When the warning came in that the bride was there, I had to leave the groomsmen and wait by myself in the choir room. That wait was a bit more awkward since I didn’t really have anyone to talk to.
• Kepi fell over partway through the ceremony. Many jokes were made at his expense throughout the evening, but he was really good natured about it. I had no forewarning of it happening, but people later mentioned that he had gone pretty pale.
• My Grandpa, who performed the service for us, forgot to let me kiss my bride. In my confusion, I asked a little louder than I might’ve, and the whole congregation had a chuckle. Hey, that’s what I signed up for! ;-) We got our kiss in after the signing of the register.
• Despite our note at the bottom of the bulletin asking for a moment to reflect with each other in private immediately after the service, Rebecca (one of the bridesmaids) barged in to our room. We learned later that she hadn’t seen a bulletin. Whoops! It was okay though.
• The ceremony took roughly 35-40 minutes.
• The congregation exited the church, and hung around to see us leave the church and enter the limo. That was another surreal moment – once again I’m not used to all the attention.
• I’ve never been in a limo before. It was a bit tight for 10 people. It was fun, but I probably wouldn’t sign up for it again. It was nice to be able to see all the wedding party members between photoshoot locations.
• Jason Kasumovic, our photographer, was fantastic.
• Family formal photos were taken next to the St Albert Public Library.
• The weather couldn’t be better (thank you for not raining on us!).
• Other shooting locations included the Muttart Conservatory grounds and the Royal Alberta Museum grounds.
• Lunch was picked up from the Upper Crust Cafe. Absolutely wonderful sandwhiches. Two words: cheese bread.
• Good turnout at the reception. It was good to see so many friends/family there.
• The head table was a very tight fit.
• The food was excellent.
• First course: spinach salad with feta cheese, held in place by a long cucumber slice around it all.
• Main course: salmon and roast beef. The salmon was a bit overcooked I thought, but the beef was very tender and delicious.  We heard the salmon at the buffet was pretty good though, and we hope that was the case.
• Dessert: A wonderful strawberry shortcake in several layers. Absolutely delicious.
• Speeches: Short and sweet. Some touching words from everyone.
• Note to other people planning their wedding: don’t wing the bride/groom speech. Also, I actually wanted to say that we had planned big-O(wedding) — that’s a computer science joke.
• Second note: have someone organize the details of the reception and come up with a schedule. It’s very hard to organize and not be frantic at the same time when things don’t quite go smoothly. Let someone else trustworthy handle the details and sit back and enjoy.
• First dance: Diane and I were a bit rusty with our waltzing, and we had to avoid tripping on her dress. But eventually we got going.
• Rickroll: Yup, we pulled off a rickroll. I didn’t hear many comments about it though, so I wonder if people actually liked it. Obviously a bunch of people were very confused.
• Slideshow: Absolutely wonderful job by my sister who I kind of threw the job at her at way too late notice.
• Dancing: I’m glad people got some serious dancing in. It was good that it got some use.
• DJs: Dan was absolutely fantastic at the DJ booth. Props to Ryan and Brad too for helping, and Ryan for his adventures getting the equipment there and returned.
• It was a lot of fun to visit with a lot of the guests. I’m sorry if we didn’t get a chance to talk to you before you had to leave — I’m sure there’s a lot of you that didn’t get a chance to talk to us.
• Last dance: Danced to Norah Jones, Come Away with Me. There was less than 20 people left at that point, and we helped close out the joint. Not too bad I think.

I just want to say that it was an amazing day, and this is just a sampling of what I was thinking about throughout the day. I want to also make sure to thank some of the important people who made the evening possible:

• The Parents. Thanks to both sets of parents, who took care of more details than I can imagine. They were extremely supportive of our desire to run the show our way for the most part, but they were also very helpful in making sure we had details we hadn’t thought of figured out. I don’t really want to know what all went in to making everything look so wonderful.
• My Grandparents. I am extremely fortunate to still have my wonderful grandparents around to not only see my wedding, but also play an important role. My Grandfather got a one day licence to wed us (he no longer has an active licence since he retired from ministry), and was very supportive in helping us find the right choices for the ceremony we eventually performed. My Grandmother is simply awesome :)
• The wedding party (and as a subset, both Diane’s and my siblings): They put up with our lengthy photoshoot, as well as the huge number of tasks that we put on them with little to no notice. Thank you so very much!
• Many thanks to our Ushers: Rhianne and Brendan.
• Thanks to Simone who arranged the beautiful cello quartet that played at the ceremony!
• Nolan played a couple of key roles: he videotaped the ceremony for us, and he provided the projector to play the slideshow on. Thank you very much for your help!
• A huge thank you goes to Ryan Falkenbe(rg), who endured quite a saga to get the audio equipment to the venue on time. Thankfully, his jeep didn’t lose a window! Ryan put up with a bunch of harrassment from me to get the audio equipment booked, and transported.
• Thank you to Paul Myroon who did a very good job displaying his MC talents.
• Thank you to Dan, Brad, and Ryan who were in and around the DJ booth for most of the night playing some great tunes. I understand Dan took over the show, so he deserves a great deal of the credit. But thanks to the other guys for stepping in as well!
• A big thank you the the group of people who helped setup the hall. Pam and Madeleine were two people who helped our mothers setup the hall. I sure hope I’m not missing people here, but we weren’t there to see that setup.
• Thanks to Jodie for pouring out the tea for our tea ceremony.
• Thanks to An, Jasmine and Crystal for watching the guestbook and the gift table.
• Thanks to Anita for setting up the key prank.
• Megan did a fantastic job with the slideshow too. We kind of threw it at her last minute and she did a fantastic job. She even managed to figure out a way to pace through the slides so that the end of Diane’s pictures happened at the end of the first song, and the slideshow ended right at the end of the 3rd song. She was at the laptop hitting the right arrow key to show the next slide.
• Jason, our photographer, spent 12 hours of his day following us around and posing us for some excellent shots. We’re really looking forward to seeing the results of his work!
• Our very pretty wedding cake was designed and created by Claudia Kalogirou, who brought the cake herself and arranged it and everything!
• Diane’s mom’s friend Marilyn drove up from Red Deer to help decorate and serve the rehearsal feast, Diane’s neighbour Jane-Anne made us a potato salad with radishes carved into flowers, and Diane’s Aunt Janet pitched in too despite feeling a little under the weather.
• And a very big thankyou to everyone that came to enjoy the ceremony and/or the reception. It was so good to see so many faces — some that I hadn’t seen in far too long. We are so happy that so many people were able and willing to come out and see us get married and to enjoy some food and dance with us. Thank you so very much.

I sincereley hope I haven’t forgetten anyone. At this point in time I’m pretty tired, but I wanted to make sure that this got out soon. There are just two last things I wanted to say before I ran off to go collapse.

1) Since you got this far, you deserve a reward. Jason has posted a sampling of the photos he took at the wedding. They are posted at his blog. Go there and enjoy! We’re incredibly happy with the results.

2) I just want to say that this blog will be sticking around for the long haul. We’re going to use it as a way to communicate how we’re doing while we’re in Ireland. Our experiences, our photos, and our thoughts will all be shared here for you to read. I hope that at least some people find this a useful way to learn about how we’re doing overseas. Feel free to comment liberally on the posts we make!

Thank you everyone! It was a wonderful day.

Morgan