After four days of furious sight-seeing, we were finally rewarded with a day off at sea on our way to Spain.
Juan and I decided to take this opportunity to finally try out the ship's pool. Unfortunately, the ship's other 4,000 passengers had the same idea. By the time we made it on deck there wasn't a free lounge chair in sight.
Instead, we hijacked this little hut by the pool and designated it a "Pineda-only" zone. We left the vicious Val in charge of guarding its borders.
The Carnival Magic is the largest ship in the Carnival fleet. It has some rather intense water slides on the top deck. I tried the twisty yellow one and ended up in traction for two days - definitely not made for forty-year old bones.
After pruning in the pool for several hours, we noticed a couple finally leaving their chairs. We literally pushed them to the ground so we could claim their prime poolside seats.
Trish and I are looking cool in our shades. So cool, in fact, that we made friends with several of our fellow bathers - including a lovely toddler and her swimming doll (appropriately named "Dolly") and a couple from Westchester who, oddly enough, saw me in The King and I at the Westchester Broadway Theatre. Small world.
Today's sea day was also designated as our cruise's only formal evening. So we broke out our fancy duds to strut our stylish selves on the Lido deck.
Juan and Val pose deck side.
Val decides to give us her best Jerseylicious pose, proving once again that age old adage, "You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl."
Mom and dad looking spiffy.
Here we are, settling in for another delightful dinner in the Northern Lights dining room. Even without our beloved waiter, Stanimir (his section was full), we somehow found a way to smile through our overwhelming grief. The bottle of red wine didn't hurt either.
No, this is not a scene from the ship's revival production of Hello Dolly. It's the wait staff taking a break from their dinner duties to sing us a song. Sadly, I wasn't able to get a picture of mama Pineda wasted on red wine, standing by the railing and cackling at the top of her lungs while pretending to conduct our embarrassed wait staff (mainly because I was laughing so hard I couldn't keep the camera steady). But who am I to judge? I've done way worse things while in a red wine stupor. Don't ask.
The ladies show off their formal night attire in front of the hideous wall mural in our stairwell.
Aren't we handsome?
OK, fine, we'll take a real picture.
After our post-dinner photo shoot, we put the parents to bed so we could kick up our heals at the ship's casino.
With some red wine in me, I'm getting all riled up playing the slots, Cougarlicious style (pun intended).
Here's tonight's towel animal (and Trish's favorite of the trip).
I almost forgot to mention our Stromboli viewing last night. No, not the delicious Italian meat-and-chees-filled pie, but the volcanic island (accent on the first syllable: STROM-bo-li). Remember a few posts ago when I talked about Italy's three active volcanos? Well, Mt. Stromboli is the third (following Vesuvius and Etna). We were actually lucky enough to have visited all three on the same trip! There should be some kind of medal or something for people who've experienced the volcanic threesome. That sounds dirty. Anyway, we actually watched Stromboli spew ash and molten lava from its crater. Very exciting. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any pictures because it was already too dark out and we only had my sad little camera - Trish's fancy one having been stolen just hours earlier. Sad.
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