Yo. Went to see the new Harry Potter tonight. Good stuff.

Anyways, here is the lowdown on the cruise. It was pretty chilly, moreso on the boat than on land. I guess that's how that works. So the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for Nate's mom. It didn't quite work out as planned though, because she ended up being in line almost right behind us when we were boarding. Oh well - she was still surprised. The whole embarkment process was kind of a nightmare... I guess the Newark port is semi new and they don't really have the act down yet. Also, for some reason, Royal Caribbean now thinks I am a "Platinum" member, even though I've only been on one cruise before. You are supposed to have been on five for that honorable distinction. So because of this Platinum status, Nate and I wandered over to the "Platinum" check in, which ended up being ridiculous. The other people we were travelling with got through the non-Platinum line faster than we did with really no issues. Whatevs.

So we finally got on the boat and set sail at about 10pm Sunday evening. We inspected the stuff around the boat... there was an ice rink, mini golf, a rock wall, an inline skating track, a "street" with shops, and other stuff.

The next day we were at sea, so we went ice skating. That was interesting. It wasn't a full sized rink, but still pretty fun. The ice wasn't very cold... there were puddles of water laying about that Nate flailed in after falling down. Hee hee. Later that night at dinner we quickly found out that the vegetarian options on the menu were pretty much the same as they were the last time we were on a cruise... not a bad thing, but they were like "vegetable pile," "vegetable strudle," and "vegetable stack." Fun! However, the boat did have a Johnny Rocket's which served Boca burgers. That was kind of a good thing because after a few days of eating salad and desserts, I felt like I was lacking some important nutrients.

Tuesday we arrived in St. John, New Brunswick. We went on the "walking tour," led coincidentally by Nate's father. We saw a bunch of mooses - moose statues, people dressed as mooses, and the Canadian favorite - Moosehead beer. We didn't drink any Moosehead beer, but my favorite part about it was that the light version was called "Moose Light." The cool thing in St. John was Reversing Falls. It is this area where the bay empties into the river and twice a day, the water reverses because it fills up too fast for the river to empty or something like that. It wasn't quite as dramatic as I thought it might be... I was hoping for something like Niagara falls to start going backwards. But it was very subtle... I have some pictures where if you look closely, you can see the water flowing a different direction around the rock. Also, Heinz ketchup in Canada uses "liquid sugar" as opposed to the USA's high fructose corn syrup. Good to know, eh?

Several times after we got back on the boat, we tried to inline skate, but the track kept being closed because it was too wet or windy. Hrmph. Nate and I had big plans to wake up and jog every morning. Uh... needless to say, that didn't come close to happening. We did take the stairs a lot though, unless it was more than like 8 floors.

So... the next day we arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before leaving, I had looked up a vegetarian restaurant that sounded cool to eat at that was close to where the boat was docking... so we hiked it over there and found it. We didn't go right away, though, because we had a "Historic Pub Tour" we had to go on at 1:30. The place closed at 4, so we figured we'd run over there after the tour was over. Unfortunately, we forgot that Halifax is an hour ahead of EST and we were instructed to stay on EST when we got off the boat. So, we ended up getting there at 3 our time, but it was 4 their time and closed. Grr! But about the pub tour.

They had us wear these fisherman hats called "Sou'westers." They claimed it was so they could know that we were part of the group, which I'm sure is partly true, but I think it was mostly to make us look like idiotic tourists in front of the locals. Oh yeah, and following a fully costumed bagpiper from pub to pub didn't help to hide that we were tourists, either. Regardless, it was fun. We got to try some beer that we probably wouldn't be able to get around here. Halifax is a pretty neat city... it reminds me of Pittsburgh except maybe a little "hipper." It had lots of neat little shops... kind of like maybe the South Side in Pittsburgh, but everywhere. They said they had the highest concentration of bars, college students, professors, and churches anywhere in North America (I think).

After the pub tour, we decided to go on a tour of Alexander Keith's brewery, whose beer we had just sampled, since we weren't able to go to the restaurant. That was pretty cool, too. It was more of a mock up of how the brewery looked like 100 years ago. They said it was the oldest working brewery in North America and also is the best seller of India Pale Ale anywhere. Or so they say. They gave us more samples of beer there. By that time we were pretty beered up, so we headed back to the boat and took like a 2 hour nap.

One of the nights on the boat, we went to the ice show. Pretty cool. One of the couples ice skating did the spinning around move like in the movie "The Cutting Edge." If you've seen it, you know what I mean. We also went to the card room which was almost completely taken over by Chinese women playing Mah Jong. It was ridiculous... everytime we went up there, they were taking up every table. I guess they like their Mah Jong. It was kind of interesting because I'd never seen anyone play it not on the computer. Anyways, I found that they had the Survivor board game up there (!!!), so of course we had to play. It ended up being kind of lame. I won though because I'm the ultimate Survivor. Another day, we all played Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Crazy Eights. Board games rock.

We weren't able to do much else on the boat after that because inline skating was like permanently closed and the ice rink had no more open skating times. We sure did fill up on food, though, and hung out with all the towel animals the stateroom attendants made for us everynight. My favorite food was the Indian vegetable curry. Oh yeah, they sold little towel animal stuffed animals in one of the gift shops, and I bought a towel pig for my sister. We named her "Gina" and she is living happily with Kim right now. They have a website - www.towelpal.com. But uh, I just went to it and there isn't anything there! What crap.

So, that's about it. Canada was cool (and chilly). I thought Halifax was a really nice place... I wouldn't mind living there if it wasn't so cold all the time. When we were there, it was probably 50 degrees and we saw girls hanging out outside in tank tops and summertime clothing. I guess that is warm for them.

I have my Ethics final on Monday... jeez! That came up quick. And I have to go back to work. Suckage.