New London, Connecticut

Steam Train, originally uploaded by quimerizar.

Saturday October 13
After finally falling asleep, I woke up in New London, Connecticut to a brisk morning. Completely motivated to not gain any weight on the trip, I headed to the gym at 730 (plus, it did help that I couldnt sleep due to the snoring). After the gym, we disembarked the ship and hooked up with our rental car and headed to Essex, Connecticut for our shore excursion.

The excursion consisted of taking a steam train through part of Connecticut, then a boat, then back to the train. Kenny and Denise had signed us up for the Parlor seats - advertised as "riding in 1920's spelndor". This was pretty cool - we each had our own comfy recliner type chair, except it doesn't recline. You know, the kind you find in Grandma's livingroom. Another highlight of the trip was that they served wine and beer for our trip. Naturally, we ordered.

After traveling through an unimpressive show of leaves in Connecticut, we got off the train to board a boat - the Becky Thatcher. I personally just liked the boat because of it's name, but who can blame me. Kenny and Ron were being a little crazy on the plank boarding the ship and they got yelled at by a shipmate named Al who told them not to horse around. Al was old and definitiely overly militant, which caused us to make fun of him the rest of the trip - declaring him a fun hater. While on the longer than it should have been boat ride, we got a little bored. We were sitting right next to the mens room and decided to take over granting permissions for entrance to the bathroom. We decided to ask the next person for their "pee pass" (which was a play on words from our SEA PASS cards we were required to carry on and off the ship). So, the next man comes up and I ask him if he has a pee pass card, we started laughing so much that I don't remember what his answer was. Probably had to be there but it was still funny.

After the boatride, we returned to the the train. Prior to leaving the train, the waitress had promised to save our same seats for us. We got back on, but someone had already inhabited the seats (a nice young couple with a baby). The waitress made the young couple move for ME (after I had already sat down in a different seat- telling them it was 'reserved') I felt pretty bad, but she had already made them move, so I went up to sit with them anyway.

We headed back to the ship and got ready for our first formal dinner. We hadn't showed up in the dining room the night before, so we got to meet our waiters this night. Wilma was our head waitress - she introduced herself as Wilma "like Fred Flintstone Yabba Dabba Do". Oliver was our waiter and Ishy was our assistant waitress. This night I had escargot for the first time in my life. It was good - kind of meaty, very garlic-y, and kind of reminded me of portabello mushrooms sauteed in butter and garlic. I liked it. Of course, we enjoyed a nice bottle of wine.

After dinner, I went for my free facial. It was really nice and very relaxing. I went to bed early and got a few hours jump on avoiding the snoring. The rest of the crew spent the night in the casino playing Texas Hold Em. Kenny took money from the table!