Maryann's Musings

  Mexico was new territory. I have been to many countries in my limited lifetime (my family jokingly says we have visited the airports of a lot of countries, but never been "in" the the actual country). Okay, I get that it is a tourist island and is only a romanticized version of the real thing. But for the first time, it was definitely a taste; a little piece of the whole picture.   I take first impressions seriously (not too seriously, I hope), and in that respect Cozumel did not disappoint. The water was what I first noticed. We arrived in the morning, but we were so busy grabbing all of our necessities that I never took time to really look at it.  It was the clearest, cleanest, bluest, most water-like looking water I have ever seen. If only our bottled water looked like that!   Even though a cruise ship had just unleashed on the little island, it was not too crowded (after we made it out of a little tunnel they herded us all through)....

    If you've never been on a cruise before, trying to describe the moment when you first step onto the ship could be difficult. For us, there was a rush of fresh air and then we heard music as we walked into a very colorful and large room. A staircase stretched up above us and 4 or 5 glass elevators were traveling through their large tubes. I was at a loss for words (which was a good thing because we were still trying to find our way around). Once we found our rooms, we split into three groups. Our cousins went one way, my parents and two brothers another, and Christianna, GranAnnie, and I got our own room as well. The rooms were larger than I had expected, and that's saying something. We had a cabin with a porthole on the far side, a large bed that could split in two, and much more closet space than any of us had anticipated.     A   My favorite moments on the Carnival Liberty were as follows (not in order of what I liked the most... I ...